The turrets are a larger design that are intended for external use and do not have any dust covers. The knobs on the scope are also excellent with a few very notable features that require some mention in this article. I really do not know why there is a different philosophical difference between hunting and shooting practices around the world, but there is. It is a handy feature and even USA based Leupold now offers several scopes with the reticule in the first focal plane. So, you can be scanning the area of operations at any power and can get your mil reading without having to change the scope power. For those of you that have never seen a first focal plane scope, this clearly shows that the reticule itself appears to shrink and grow with the different power settings. The picture below is taken at 4x where as the picture of the reticule up above was taken at 16x. This means the mil-dots are accurate at ANY magnification settings. This good ol’ traditional mil-dot reticule gets the job done though, and it is located on the first focal plane as most European scopes do. This scope has a traditional mil-dot reticule, where as the new USMC adopted scope uses the “Gen-2” mil-dot with half mil hash marks. But, all of that being said, the optics are better. Are they so much better it is worth the extra price? Hum, perhaps if you have the money, but again, it is hard to say, and maybe not. Is the optics twice as good? No, obviously not. Of course, I had it side by side with many other high end scopes from Leupold, Sightron, Nikon and others, and there is not any one thing that you can point at say “wow… that is clearly better”, but looking at the picture as a whole, it is better. I have said it a thousand times and I will mention it again here, it is extremely difficult to compare optics on modern scopes, BUT, occasionally you will look through a scope and say “wow”, which is what happens here. The optics on the scope are exceptional, and probably the best I have looked through. Of course, when you pay the big dollars for an S&B scope, the thing you are paying for is the optical quality, and this scope does not disappoint.
#Remington 700 schmidt bender full#
The eye relief on the scope is also generous providing ample room to use the scope on high recoiling rifles without problem, and it appears to cover a wide range allowing for quick full sight picture alignment. The tube is a solid one piece tube, as you would expect, and the exterior finish is a fairly typical anodized finish that you would see on any number of decent quality scopes. There is a typical European fast focus eye piece (diopter adjustment), which worked well, and there should not be too much of a problem to use a flip up scope cap once you have the eye piece adjusted for you. The power adjust ring was very easy to grip and did not require a whole lot of effort to adjust, which is actually a little less common than you might think. Just an overall feel of quality everywhere on the scope All of moving parts are precise, smooth, and lacked any “slop”. But there are a few ring manufacturers that make 34mm rings and luckily the scope had a set already mounted and spaced for a picatinny base, so mounting for this particular review was effortless. The tube is a 34mm tube, which obviously is not a standard tube diameter. Everything had a very nice uniform finish, tight tolerances, no slop and just excellent quality everywhere. Probably the first thing I noticed about the scope is the nice solid feel and construction of the scope. We managed to get an S&B on loan from one of our loyal readers (Thanks!!) and decided to run an evaluation on the scope. The S&B scopes have had a long time reputation of amazing optics and high quality, but the price has always been out of reach for most shooters and even most law enforcement agencies out there.
![remington 700 schmidt bender remington 700 schmidt bender](https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/oukAAOSwLapgrbj7/s-l300.jpg)
No matter what controversies may arise from the testing and the adoption, the fact remains that the S&B is now the USMC’s official sniping scope. This was quite the surprise as there were scopes provided by 25 companies and the S&B supposedly is the only scope that passed all the tests. One of the most talked about optics topics as of late has been the USMC’s move to adopt the Schmidt and Bender PM LP/2 3-12x50mm scope on all of their M40A3 and M82 sniper rifles.