Pulsar’s Merger LRF XL50 thermal-imaging biocular - POWER COUPLE

Famously, the first principle of journalism is “Don’t bury the lead”. I’m definitely not a proper journalist, then, because I do that all the time (I write reviews, after all, not news stories). Except this time, it’s different, because Pulsar’s 1024x768 @ 12 µm XL sensor feels like a genuine breakthrough moment. Things looked great before (I loved my XP50 and XG50 Pulsars), but after you use an XL50 (Merger or Thermion), you simply know that you weren’t seeing all there was to see, and now you are. It’s like one of those parties where you’re thinking that the person you’re chatting to is pretty cute, when an absolute stunner walks in. And just like those moments, you weigh up banking the good you’ve got against the cost of better. Do you write off the opportunity as “out of my league” or make it an “I’m the man!” moment? Well, I’ll leave that up to you. I’m just the reviewer (a line that doesn’t work at parties!)
Seriously, though, a Merger LRF XL50 is a much sounder bet. The cost is clear up front (£5,899.95), there’s a solid guarantee (3 years), and you get expert service support from a longstanding UK distributor (Thomas Jacks). That said, you probably won’t need either and can look forward to taking your Pulsar out every night for years and having it perform perfectly every time.

Biocular
As you will already have gathered, I love everything about the new Pulsar Merger LRF XL50 biocular. Well, almost. But we’ll get to my little wish list later. The priority here is that odd word ‘biocular’, not the misspelling Microsoft Word evidently thinks it is, but a specialised term, coined by Pulsar, for a device that presents the image from a single objective lens in dual eyepieces. Sure, the Merger looks like a binocular externally, with a pair of symmetrical barrels joined by a central bridge, but each barrel has a different function, and the bridge contains built-in rechargeable and quick-change batteries, not a focussing dial and flexible hinge.
Closer inspection shows that only the left-hand barrel houses the germanium glass lens that feeds the new XL thermal sensor, a lens focused via a rubber-armoured ring at the front. The ring’s large diameter aids precise focusing, which matters because the Merger’s depth-of-field is quite shallow at closer ranges. This is a feature rather than a bug, as it lets you progressively penetrate the undergrowth until you bracket the target of interest, bringing it into sharp focus while causing irrelevant foreground and background details to lose definition. Because doing this also provides a guide to the relative range, it helps you gauge the size of the heat source and look for the features that will identify it, too.
For example, I recently took the Merger with me for a stalk through some brambly woodland with an air rifle. Rabbits and squirrels were on my hit list, but bedded woodcock, pheasants, and muntjac were not. In every case, the Mergers enabled me to make the right identification, even confirming that a heat source perched in an ivy-covered tree was a squirrel and not an owl. The Merger makes it possible to seize such opportunities and avoid such mistakes better than any device I’ve used.

How far?
Rangefinding isn’t all a matter of parallax adjustment, of course. The ‘LRF’ designation announces the presence of an onboard laser rangefinder, which is housed in the Merger’s right-hand barrel. Its nominal range is 1,000m, but on a good hard target, it will reach a lot further. The control button is at the near right, so falls naturally under the index finger of your right hand. A couple of short presses will ‘wake up’ the rangefinder and return a range, respectively. Whereas a long press will activate the ‘scan’ function, generating a continuous sequence of ranges as you survey the landscape. Scanning like this can help penetrate intervening treelines etc. However, it would be nice to have a ‘brush’ function that ignored readings from such obstacles. Also, having recently come to value the integrated ballistics in Pulsar’s laser-rangefinder-equipped Thermion models, I’d love to be able to upload ballistic profiles to the Merger to obtain holdover values to apply as I transition to my rifle for the shot, or communicate to a shooter when spotting for a buddy. As this is a firmware function, and Pulsar regularly enhances and adds features in their firmware upgrades, perhaps it will come. By the way, if you try to lase something and can’t get a reading, do check the right-hand lens cover isn’t closed. Don’t ask me how I know that!
The lens covers themselves are captive, lock securely into place, and are made from a tough rubberised polymer, which allows them to be opened or closed silently as well as to provide protection for the ends of the barrels and the lenses alike. At the other end, a softer composition is used for the eyecups. These have a half-moon-shaped flange to reduce daytime reflections and night-time glow. They are also free to rotate. Too free (on the test sample at least), so required repeated re-positioning, calling for the judicial application of electrical tape.

Fine-tuning
A more useful kind of personalisation is the ability to focus the eyepieces individually, and to move them towards/away from each other to match the spacing of your eyes (a.k.a. inter-pupillary distance or IPD). This lets you see the twin 1024x768px full-colour AMOLED HD displays in pin-sharp focus and with zero eye strain. Indeed, it’s not just being ‘easy on the eyes’ that constitutes the primary advantage of the biocular format but being easy on our brains. This is because the latter is ‘wired’ to interpret what we see by matching the simultaneous inputs from both eyes. When those inputs are radically different, as when one eye is looking at a bright thermal display and the other is closed or peering into the darkness, our brains must work harder to resolve the disconnect. Conversely, when both eyes see the same thing, they trick our brains into becoming more immersed in the scene, while reducing the possibility of missing individual details. Thus, with the Merger, if one eye doesn’t get it, the other one does.
Consequently, I felt I could see every blue tit, tree creeper, mouse, and moth in the forest. I caught the flick of a deer’s ear above a distant ditch, and I watched squirrels chase each other around a tree 600m away. Plus, I could do all this on the Merger’s native 2.5x magnification. Yes, you can scroll up to 20x via the menu (near left-hand button) or hop there in three steps (far left-hand button), but it is digital magnification, meaning a bigger view of an ever-smaller part of the screen. So, while every so often 5x may show you something you missed at 2.5x, and while there’s a picture-in-picture function you can activate if you want to clutter things up (great on a riflescope but largely pointless on a spotter), the smart play is to stay at 2.5x and exploit/enjoy the absolutely effing fantastic wide-angle (14.0° x 10.5°) view from the whole sensor. And if you want to replay or share that view, you can instantly save it to the built-in 64Gb memory card as stills or video (mid-right-hand button). Alternatively, you can beam it to the Stream Vision 2 app on your phone via the Merger’s 2.4/5Ghz WiFi connection, for real-time viewing, social-media sharing, or storing on your device or in the cloud.

Get a grip
Moving from the digital to the physical, the Mergers are substantial (197x140x72mm/950-grams), so it’s good they come with a comfy neoprene neck strap, even if the strap is too long to wear in my preferred, high-chest ‘tank commander’ style. Nevertheless, two-hand operation is the rule, making handling the Mergers a less agile affair than using a monocular. There’s also a padded carry case, and you can shorten the strap and wear this on your chest, too, tucking the Mergers back in between uses. However, this raises the question: given the improved ergonomics of the new Telos shoulder holster, why didn’t Pulsar design the Merger’s case as a proper bino harness?
These minor missed opportunities aside, the Mergers have everything right, including lots of stuff I’ve not mentioned yet: multiple colour palettes, image smoothing, pre-set intensity options, a rugged magnesium-alloy housing, dual batteries for hot-swap functionality and long operating times, IPX7 environmental proofing, a tripod socket and supplied adapter, a dual charging adapter and power cable. So, all you need, basically, barring a spare APS3 battery (£39.95), which is desirable rather than essential. There’s even a proximity sensor between the eyepieces that extends the runtime by switching automatically to/from standby mode.

Conclusion
To conclude, the superb view from the new XL sensor I first experienced in Pulsar’s flagship Thermion 2 LRF XL50 riflescope, looks even more awesome in the biocular format. For sustained observation, or simply for seeing every living thing in a stunningly-detailed landscape, the Merger is worth every penny.