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The Nikko Platinum Nighteater 4-16x50

The Nikko Platinum Nighteater 4-16x50

The Nikko was the least expensive at £129.95 but still retained a good level of optical quality and features. Sure they are not Zeiss or Swarovski, but not everyone can afford that sort of money, so must choose from less expensive options.

This scope is not small, having a length of 15.25 inches, which does not include the addition of the supplied sunshade that adds another two inches but it is not unduly heavy when mounted on a slim build rimfire rifle. The magnification range is 4-16x power which is just right for close rabbit work in low light or longer range when mounted to a fox rifle.

The zoom ring for adjusting magnification is reassuringly firm in operation. One thing to note is that past 12x power the eye relief does become more critical and you have to pay real attention to correct positioning of your head on the stock. The objective lens is a good 50mm diameter, with total outer casing bringing the outer diameter to 58mm, so high mounts are needed. There is a curious lip to the top of the objective lens that forms a roofed appearance which defines the Nighteater shape.

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Nikko use 30mm body tubes on their Nighteater range of scopes with a flat black finish. There is 2.5 inches of mounting area forward and to the rear of the turrets. This enables the scope to be comfortably mounted to suit most personal preferences.

The eye piece is the fast focus type with a rubber edged surface.  The reticule is of the Mil –Dot type. There’s a good side mounted parallax knob to the left side of the turrets, with increment markings in metres at 10, 12, 16, 25, 35, 50, 100, 200, 500 and infinity. You can focus right down to almost nothing and all the way out to infinity keeping the scope focused at any mag. This makes for a very flexible scope for close rabbits or called in foxes, and then a quick adjustment for more precise longer range shots. There is a bit of slack and backlash in the movement, but nothing to trouble you in field use.

The Nighteater uses low profiled external windage and elevation adjustment turrets with 1/8” increments at 100 yards per click. Although the clicks were a little light in operation there was increment adjustment marked from 0 to 8 and this gave a 9 MOA adjustment per complete turret turn with maximum turret turns of 4.5 on both elevation and windage. You can zero the turrets back to 0 by loosening then tightening three small Allen screws.

The million dollar question is… are the optics any good? Well for the price I was more than happy. The coated lens where bright and resolved colours pretty accurately, and there was only a small amount of vignetting at the very edge of the image, which only showed up at the higher end of the magnification range. I mounted the Nighteater on a .22lr, .17 Mach 2 and .17 Rem centrefire to test performance on rabbits, crows and foxes. At first light the scope performed best at the lower end of the mag range despite having a 30mm tube; but taking in to account the price of the scope, you only lost 10 -15 minutes of shooting time, over some higher spec., but more expensive scopes. I picked off several rabbits with no problem using a .22lr and more longer range crows when mounted on the .17 Mach 2. When used on the fox rifle it was fine in ambient light but I did find that with a lamp mounted I got a bit of flare from the brightly finished internals of the scope.

The big Nikko had all the features you could need from a good all-round rabbit and fox hunting scope and at a good price too.

  • The Nikko Platinum Nighteater 4-16x50 - image {image:count}

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  • The Nikko Platinum Nighteater 4-16x50 - image {image:count}

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  • The Nikko Platinum Nighteater 4-16x50 - image {image:count}

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