Arken: Too Good to Be True Chinese Glass?

[General RE LEE]

I see a lot of You Tube personalities and social media talk about Arken.

The 4-16x44 zero stop 30mm EPL scope has a good looking reticle on their site.

Is this stuff dressed up Chinese garbage or decent optics? I have a rifle an Arken might make sense if it’s repeatable on dialing and has useable low light performance.

 

[JGRaider]

Optical quality is excellent, getting you well past legal shooting light along with the excellent illuminated reticle. It works as advertised. I've got the 6-24x and 4-16x and both have done everything I've asked on targets out to 900 yds and culling whitetail does and about 25 hogs.

 

[SIR_34:16]

Arken EPL-4 4-16x44mm Field Eval

This is a field evaluation of the Arken EPL-4 4-16x44mm F1 scope. This scope was brought to me from Ryan Avery for an evaluation. The ammunition used was Hornady Black 168gr AMAX that was purchased by Ryan. The 20 round proof group was just over 1.1 MOA, and the largest 10 round group that has...

rokslide.com

Form did an evaluation of this one. Looks like it passed the 18" and left/right 36" drops and partially passed the single top drop. Things shifted after the 9x 36" drops and then it had trouble holding zero after that.

The tracking reviews I've seen online have been positive so I rolled the dice and picked up the 4-16x at the sale price for a 223 project I'm working on. Figured for my use case the partial pass is good enough. Still waiting on the Stockys VG stock to come in before I can shoot it.

 

[huntsman22]

They track like they have eyes...... But I only have 8 of them, and just got their NV scope.

 

[JF_Idaho]

They are decent for the money as long as you get a QC one.

But, take reviews with a grain of salt. They have (and the people that review them) been slammed for sending out tons of free stuff and even paying cash for good reviews. I know that goes for a lot of companies, but not to the same degree. They slammed youtube, reddit, etc with paid shills from large to quite small.

 

[Duh]

I have one that I thought was awesome. It’s dialed right on par with my night forces out to 1200 yards. I’ve hunted with it and the glass quality does fine for what the scope is. Overall I have no regrets with buying the scope and still use it.

With that said, I tipped my gun over while it was sitting on the bipod and it hit the ground (not super hard). The scope lost zero big time. I was using their 30 mm rings and made shire to check them before resighting. The rings were good and nothing appeared to move.

I’ll keep using the scope but I’m not going to rely on it.

 

[Ramem7mm]

I have one and I like it. It’s on a 22 LR and have been able to dial up to 40 MOA and back to zero with no shift in 50 yard zero.

 

[Hagas4all]

Cheep Chinese garbage dressed up with features. I had two. One brand new had parallax knob making clicking noises like a turret. Not an uncommon issue with these scopes with a bit of googling. Sent back to Arken and they said it was hooped.

I don’t think this is a product where something is being made at low cost but functions correctly. The glass is pretty good though.

 

[JGRaider]

They track like they have eyes...... But I only have 8 of them, and just got their NV scope.

Cheep Chinese garbage dressed up with features. I had two. One brand new had parallax knob making clicking noises like a turret. Not an uncommon issue with these scopes with a bit of googling. Sent back to Arken and they said it was hooped.

I don’t think this is a product where something is being made at low cost but functions correctly. The glass is pretty good though.

How do you explain what huntsman22 said then?

 

[Article 4]

Not saying anything about the performance. Never been hands on so cant say anything about the glass other than what I read

Political rant coming in hot.

I boycott as much of anything Chinese that I can...China continues to engage in unconventional warfare in a new cold war that we need to be aware of. Wars are fought with money. They will not get mine!

 

[Scottf270]

I think China is an issue for the US and am unsure of their true "power" as I don't know what info to trust. Having said that, they are doing nothing to us that our own government is not allowing them to.

Our government could stop a bunch of the China crap if they had the balls to stand up to intellectual theft and corporate greed.

 

[ChrisAU]

I’ve had a few and overall I like what they are trying to do in the scope market.

Subjectively, they have nicer feeling turrets than about any scope I’ve handled. Very confidence inspiring.

Glass is serviceable, especially in the EP series.

For a budget target gun or a pest/predator gun, sure. I wouldn’t trust them and don’t particularly like the feature set for big game anyway.

Be mad about China, but IMO first be mad at the American companies selling Chinese scopes by the truckload to American consumers that are much more cheaply made than the Arkens and for a higher margin.

 

[Steve300xcw]

They are a large scope

I have 2 of them. One died shortly after I got it. Doubt I will buy another one

 

[General RE LEE]

 

[sndmn11]

How do you explain what huntsman22 said then?

Possibly a lack of consistency coupled with inadequate QC/QA?

In the few posts so far within this thread, there's a few dead scopes.

 

[Hagas4all]

Possibly a lack of consistency coupled with inadequate QC/QA?

In the few posts so far within this thread, there's a few dead scopes.

If it’s too good to be true probably is.

 

[roosiebull]

If it’s too good to be true probably is.

From the start, I felt like this scope was a trick. I could see one for a 17hmr whacking sage rats, but beyond that, I will stick with scopes that have a history of holding up.

Even the new maven, I am not jumping on that bandwagon for awhile (obviously different category of scopes)

I agree with your reply, that’s how I treat these scopes, it would be a good price if they were reliable and overpriced if not, and the reliability reports aren’t on my side

I think scope manufacturers have to be pretty deliberate in building a reliable scope, and most aren’t

 

[sdupontjr]

I had an EP5, like mentioned above, the turrets felt nice, it did track good, the glass is at least to my eyes, ok at best. Nothing great. I had the 5-25x56 FFP and anything about 16x, the glass wasn't near as clear. Useable, but again, not as clear. One thing I don't think was mentioned yet or maybe it has and I missed it, WEIGHT. That sucker was a boat anchor. Which in my case, I had it setup on my Tikka CTR so the kids could shoot it. the extra weight helped with recoil. I have since sold it and put the CTR on a diet, but it did serve its purpose.

For the price that I picked up the EP5, i guess it was ok. I just recently picked up another in that price point, but I haven't dialed it yet. The Meopta R 3-15x50 is in the same price point. Much lighter, but also 3-15x56 vs 5-25x56, so thats a given.