I have been using the Razor HD II for about 6 months. It’s a well-known optic, and there are many good reviews online for the piece already. They discuss its weight, its features, its huge eye-box, and they discuss X, Y, or Z… but they seem to neglect the real meat and potatoes of the optic. The Razor HD II is a Jack of All Trades.

I studied my options for weeks before I chose the Razor. $1400 isn’t chump change. It cost more than the ACOG it replaced, but looking at the optic from a shooters perspective can give us some good reasons to go with a high-end variable over a ACOG.

First and foremost, the optic I chose has a JM-BDC1 reticle. This reticle is a BDC calibrated for multiple loadings. The ranging marks are good for 9 inch wide target, and not the shoulder width of the typical BDC stadia. For ranging purposes on a human silhouette, the head must be used instead of the shoulders to measure an accurate range. I don’t consider this good or bad, just different.

What is good though, is that the BDC mirrors several important loadings very well. 55 and 62 grain ammo will match the stadia out of 16 inch and longer systems well with a sight in at + – 100 yards. Heavier ammo in the 69-77 grain range will match the stadia closely if zeroed at 200 yards. This makes the razor a good system for people who might be switching rifles or ammo types and haven’t settled on a specific loading.

Furthermore, since it’s a second focal plane optic, we can also modify the bullet drop by dialing back a bit on the magnification. Very oddly… i found that, according to Strelok Ballistic Calculator, the Razor HD would calibrate very well at 3x for a 12 inch .300 blackout firing supersonic loadings. Also the 9 inch stadia (calibrated at 6x) become 18 inch stadia at 3x so suddenly this optic can be capably used for a loading it wasn’t designed for…

Obviously experimentation is necessary to identify loadings that match well to the stadia and which level of magnification will further align with the bullet drop. Since the Razor is offered in Mil-Rad and MOA reticles as well, you can go that route too instead of tweaking things like I do with the JM-BDC-1.

The illumination is daylight bright, and is a single dot in the center of the cross-hairs. Is it red dot bright? Yes. The Razor’s field of view at 1x and bright red dot make this a devastating variable up close.

When you are stretching the optics legs, you can take off the caps and dial in your dope. Underneath the caps the optic is waterproof so no need to worry about leaving the turrets exposed. The important thing to note here is that takes a full 50 minutes of rotation to go past your zero. Since it doesn’t have zero stops, the huge amount of rotation should keep you from getting lost in the dial. If you are shooting 5.56 in a 0-600 yard setting you would need to shoot one slow… derpy loading to need to rotate the dial past 25 minutes.

Wind corrections are also marked and can go 25 minutes either way.

The Razor HD II has plenty of stiff competition. There are many options at the Razor HD’s $1300 price point, but I think it has a nice mix of features to allow you to shoot it in a variety of ways to extract the most value for your dollar. Not to mention the glass is beautiful. Overall, I believe an optic like this goes well on a general purpose gun. It’s not specialized enough to give a precision minded shooter the tools he / she needs for long-range work, and it’s not as light and fast on target as a red dot. It, like many other variables… operates in that niche where it is a jack of all trades, but a master of none. That said, it has more going for it than many other variables I have handled due to its combination of features.

Lothaen

+ Glass is clear

+ Turrets are hard to get lost in

+ Water proof with or without caps

+ Can be very versatile if you experiment

+ Red dot bright illumination

+ BDC, MOA or Mil-Rad options available

– weight

– heavyness

+ increases physical endurance