Z-Point

26 Dec 08

Zeiss Z-Point:

Another worthy entry into the militarized, zero-magnification, rifle-optics competition is the new Zeiss Z-Point. You can see it at zeiss.com

Only slightly bigger than the Aimpoint Micro, the Z-Point comes with an integral, spring-loaded mount that makes instant installation on any rail something that can be done at the user-level. The unit is powered via a single hearing-aid battery, augmented by a solar panel on the top. How much the solar panel extends battery life during actual field use remains to be seen!

I mounted my copy of the Z-Point on my wonderful Krebs/Kalashnikov (KTR, Krebs Tactical Rifle) in 223. The KTR comes with an integral rail, mounted on top of the dust-cover. As with Aimpoint and EOTech, eye-relief not critical. The Z-Point sets itself up perfectly with existing iron sights, so that the iron sights are sill useable in the bottom third of the optic. Within ten minutes of opening the box in came in, my Z-Point was solidly mounted and ready to go!

A new feature with the Z-Point, and one that I sincerely hope is immediately copied by EOTech and Aimpoint, is self-adjusting brightness of the illuminated aiming point (red dot, similar to Aimpoint's). The brightness of the dot goes up and down automatically, according to ambient light. Within this feature, the Operator may still manually brighten or dim the dot, to his own preference. Now, when going from bright sunlight to dark shade, as is typical when pig-hunting in South FL, I won't have to screw around, at inconvenient times, with brightness adjustments!

As with EOTech, Z-Point's aiming dot turns itself off, after four hours, to conserve battery life. When I talk with the Zeiss folks at the SHOT show, I' m going to ask them if it is possible to set up the Z-Point so that the aiming dot stays "on" indefinitely, until I manually turn it off,as is the case with Aimpoint. That is my preference, as I don't like surprises!

In the optics business, few enjoy Zeiss' reputation for quality, and I believe the Z-Point will prove itself worthy, but, of course, I need to satisfy myself personally through heavy use in our Urban Rifle Courses.

We have many UR Programs scheduled for 2009, and my Z-Point/KTR duette will surely get an adequate work-out!

More later.

/John