Konus Eternity 6-24x50 riflescope

This was my first opportunity to use and review a Konus riflescope, and I was pleased that it arrived in the 6-24x50 specification, as many other manufacturers use this format, making comparisons easier.

Starting with the finish
The Konus has a well-burnished, hard-anodised 30mm main tube with an enlarged objective body housing the 50mm lens, which is recessed 10mm for protection. A 75mm sunshade is supplied along with clear lens covers that stretch front to rear, and these have enough extension to work with or without the sunshade. As you would expect, the centre saddle carries the windage, elevation, and parallax dials, with the latter also showing the extended intensity adjustment dial for the illuminated reticle. There are 11 stages to control the red-illuminated reticle, and the common CR2032 battery fits under the end cap with a coin slot.

Control options
The parallax on the outer dial runs from 10 yards to infinity through approximately 290-degrees of rotation. It does this without excessive backlash, enabling the image focus to be dialled quickly with repeatable precision. All the controls feature acceptable knurling for grip, and are 36mm in diameter, striking a good compromise between excessive bulk and easy manipulation. The elevation and windage turrets lift to unlock and have 80 clicks per turn, which equates to 8 MRAD (80cm at 100m). The dials are clearly marked with individual 0.1 MRAD (1cm@100m) increments, and the clicks are both tactile and audible for assured adjustment. The clicks are ideally spaced, with 80 on a 36mm dial, so it’s easy to operate the turrets quickly without excessive overrun. Finally, the windage turret allows you to dial left or right of centre, and this is also clearly marked with obvious clicks.

Options
Konus supplies two elevation dial outer caps. The one fitted runs continuously within the mechanical limits of the scope’s internals, while the other has a zero-stop mechanism within. I quite like this feature, because on a moderately priced scope that is possibly going to attract less experienced new users, zero-stop turrets can often complicate and confuse zeroing procedures if they are not fully understood. Here, you have the option of keeping things very simple if you prefer.
No data has been published, but the scope appears to offer 17 MRAD of overall windage and elevation adjustment for zeroing and longer-range shooting. It certainly isn’t a market-leading specification, but this is not an excessively expensive optic, and I like the fact that capability has been capped because I see too many scopes offering too much for too little, and they usually suffer badly for it. The Konus doesn’t seem to have fallen into this trap.
A red polymer tool is supplied to remove the turret caps so that you can reset the zero markers or fit the zero-stop dial.

Free space
There is 65mm of clear tube space in front of and behind the saddle for the scope rings, enabling lots of room for setup on different rifles. The eye relief is specified as 81 to 86mm from 24x to 6x magnification, meaning it remains pleasantly stable across the magnification range. This ensures you don’t need to reposition excessively to maintain a full, vignette-free field of view.
The magnification is controlled at the front of the ocular body, by rotating the collar 180-degrees from 6x to 24x. Knurling is featured for grip, and a removable 19mm throw lever is supplied for faster operation. At the very rear of the scope’s ocular body is a fast-focus eyepiece, which is rubberised for grip and provides excellent reticle focus. Excessive eye relief beyond 90mm is often optically detrimental on anything other than heavy-recoil rifles, so I was glad Konus kept it shorter.

The best of FFP
The reticle is clear and nicely weighted, and it comes in the first focal plane, so it visually grows as the magnification is increased. This ensures that all the milliradian hash marks are accurate, no matter what magnification setting you are on. The outer edges feature broader bars, while the centre contains 20 MRAD of finely detailed etchings. The lower half of the reticle carries Christmas tree-type markings for extended windage aim-offs, which are also illuminated. Illumination with a fine, first focal plane reticle makes a scope more versatile, as you can maintain the full field of view at low magnification without losing the inherently small reticle. When wound up to full power, I was pleased with the clarity and how much free space was still available to see the bullet strike on target without excessive complexity. The mechanical tracking proved acceptably precise and correlated well to the reticle, so I was confident dialling to longer ranges with my .22 rimfire and getting an accurate return to zero.

Conclusion
As stated before, it’s good to see an optic properly scaled in specification for its price point and realistic capability. The Eternity was not a disappointment. I thought the picture was of good quality, with a flat field of view and no particular gloom emerging around the edges. At the highest magnification setting, the field of view is 16 MRAD (1.6m@100m). At 6x, this equates to 6.4m, which is plenty of space to initially align targets or quarry without excessive compromise. I found the colour balance honestly flat without generalised weighting toward any colour, but this is my personal opinion. The contrast was still decent with above-average optical resolution. For target use in good light, the scope offered me no doubts whatsoever, and I didn’t seem to suffer excessive chromatic aberration. The image brightness through the magnification range was linear, so as you dropped back to 6x, you got much closer to realistic performance in a weak light hunting scenario, where again, the illuminated reticle is still easily acquired even at its now quarter size.

Reviewer: Chris Parkin