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Pros - Decent scope for the money - Very durable - Completely fogproof Cons - Narrow field of view - Poor illumination brightness settings Helpful Resources: Guides: mounting, sighting-in, maintenance

Welcome to our review of the Sniper 4-16x50mm Riflescope. This budget-friendly scope is designed for rifles and shotguns of all shapes and sizes, but how well does it perform as a long-range shooting accessory? Let’s find out!

What Are the Scope’s Dimensions?

The Sniper 4-16x50mm Riflescope is 15 5/8″ long without the sunshade attached, and 18 5/8″ with the sunshade. The objective lens is a 50mm lens, making this a pretty beefy scope. You may need a set of medium- to high-rise rings to keep the objective from making contact with the barrel of your gun. Weight on this scope is a whopping 23.7 ounces, making this one of the heaviest scopes I’ve ever mounted.

How Powerful Is the Sniper 4-16x50mm Riflescope?

The 50mm objective lens on the Sniper 4-16x50mm Riflescope provides you with zoom capabilities from 4X to 16X. This makes for a nice range of magnification, allowing you to do some serious shooting out to 400 yards or further. The clarity and resolution isn’t the greatest, but it’s pretty remarkable for such a budget-priced scope.

How Good Are the Optics on the Sniper 4-16x50mm Riflescope?

The optics on the Sniper 4-16x50mm Riflescope aren’t as good as you’d find on a Leupold, but they’re close. The optics are multi-coated for resistance to chipping, water, and fog, and the scope is crystal clear without the typical yellowish tint that you find on most Chinese optics. The reticle on the Sniper 4-16x50mm Riflescope is your typical Mil-Dot fare of a crosshair with range compensation dots. The reticle is fairly easy to use, but the reticle does not match with the turrets, so you’ll have to do some mental mathematics to match up the range compensation markers with your rifle’s ballistics. The reticle is illuminated in red and green, with five brightness settings. Unfortunately, these brightness settings do very little–at the minimum brightness setting, the reticles are too bright to be as useful as they could be, and the maximum setting barely increases the illumination at all.

What’s the Light Gathering Capability Like on the Scope?

Light gathering capability on this scope is fairly decent, owing to the 50mm objective lens. You won’t see details as sharply or with as much contrast as more expensive scopes, but you can still rest assured that this scope will perform adequately for deer or elk hunting in the early dawn hours or late dusk hours.

How Wide is the Field of View?

This is where the Sniper 4-16x50mm Riflescope really suffers. When I saw that this had a 50mm objective lens, I thought it would have a fairly wide field of view. Unfortunately, the linear field of view is only 22 feet at 100 yards with 4X magnification, and a tiny 6 foot field of view from 100 yards with 16X magnification. This is adequate for hunting purposes, but just barely.

How Easy is the Scope to Mount?

The Sniper 4-16x50mm Riflescope comes with what is labeled as a heavy duty ring mount, and I found that the rings included were high enough to mount the scope on my rifle without the objective lens touching the barrel. I’m not sure I’d really call these rings “heavy duty,” though, but they’ll do the job on a budget rifle.

Any Tricks or Tips About Mounting the Scope?

I’ll probably end up buying a better set of rings for the Sniper 4-16x50mm Riflescope, but I really hate to do that. A decent set of high-profile rings will likely cost as much as the scope itself costs, but there you have it.

How Easy is the Sniper 4-16x50mm Riflescope to Sight In?

This scope is very difficult to sight in, because the windage and elevation controls are poorly-designed. Rather than having a cutout in the dial to show you where you are at, the Sniper 4-16x50mm Riflescope windage and elevation dials have an almost-microscopic dot off to the right. There are also no substention lines, so you have to keep track of how many revolutions you have made. There is also no zero stop, but the turrets do lock in place. Once you get the scope sighted in, it holds zero remarkably well. I sighted this scope in over a year ago, and have not had to make any adjustments to it since then. I won’t be thrilled about sighting it in on a different rifle, but for the money it’s not bad.

How Durable is the Riflescope?

The Sniper 4-16x50mm Riflescope is built around a chassis made from 6061-T6 aircraft grade aluminum, so it’s built to last. The windage and elevation adjustments are on ball and bearings, so they are both precise and shock resistant. The multi-coated optics provides outstanding resistance to water obscuring your view, and the scope has withstood the test of time and hard use. It’s been tested on .50 caliber rifles, and held zero even with the massive recoil of my .50 BMG, so the scope should last you several years, at least.