Vortex Optics Spitfire HD Gen II 5X Prism Scope - BDC4 Reticle

Pros:- Almost zeroed at 100yrds right out of the box- Crystal clear etched reticle- reticle has hold over windage and distance for 5mph Right and Left and 300-600yrdsCons:- extremely annoying eye relief. 2.5" at max, there no adjusting it to my knowledge and it has to be all the way to the rear on the rifle- not compatible with magnifiers per vortex- the illuminated reticle causes a red glowing hue when maxed out but goes away when turned down- bottom hold over is 600yrds, idk who is shooting 600yrds with a x5 optic and only 5mph wind holdover but this probably isn't the optic for you- the reticle is very fine and easy to lose when shooting close rangesOver all, I'll tolerate it because I can't find a reliable etched reticle red dot with hold overs that's reasonably priced. I was really hoping it would be more user friendly with close ranges but it feels like votex tried to develop a red dot with long range concepts (fine reticle lines, 600yrd hold over, close eye relief)Biggest con is the poor eye relief!

The 5x Vortex Spitfire II is a good (not great) choice for a budget rifle build. It’s a very light, very compact piece of kit with some great features and some not-so-great.First — the benefit of a prism scope is simplicity. Because the reticle is etched into the glass, it’ll survive a battery outage and maintain usefulness. Compared to a LPVO scope it is a much smaller and lighter unit; if weight savings is your goal, consider this, because it is almost unbelievably small. I’ve had red dots much larger than this.The zoom is fixed but I find 5x is okay for accurate shots out to about 200 yards. Target shooters and hunters may want something with higher magnification. FOV is reasonable; no distortion or imperfections noted. Pretty good glass.What’s not so great is the eye relief (the distance from your eyeball to the scope). It’s VERY unforgiving of undisciplined shooting posture, and if you’re not aligned properly it will give you sight picture issues. Practice practice. It MUST be placed to the absolute rear of any picatinny rail — so far back, in fact, that I can’t use my trusty Magpul BUIs. I bought a pair of 45* offset irons and they work great, albeit the “rear sight” is actually forward of the ejection port. It’s a major compromise that I’ve made do with in the name of lightness and simplicity.Additionally, there is a mounting plate on top of the unit for a micro red dot. This is a welcome addition… but… It’s a “Docter” format. The industry standard at this point is RMR form factor. Vortex owns the rights to the Docter format iirc, so it makes sense as to why they did it this way… But it’s severely limiting to your choice of backup optic. Adaptor plates are not easy to find either.

I actually got my Spitfire 5x from another site when it was only $200; at that price point you'd be foolish to pass on this optic.Let's get the negatives out of the way:1 MOA adjustments? When budget option red dots are usually 1/2 MOA adjustments, I can't understand why Vortex gave a 5x prism such an imprecise adjustment option. Seriously? The Spitfire 1x uses 1/2 MOA adjustments! I take 1 star for this flaw.I get it, Vortex wants you to use their micro RDS (Venom/Viper) with the integrated Dokter footprint RDS mounting plate, but Vortex red dots are terrible on battery life and bloom like a sunflower in summer. At the least, give us an adapter to go from the Dokter cut to an RMS footprint.Battery life/no shake awake. I know, prisms are notorious for having illumination measured in minutes, and the auto shut-off is nice, but why a 12 hour auto shut-off?Now that it seems like I'm hating on this optic, I'll tell you what I like:Cost - Especially if you aren't sold on the idea of a magnified prism, this is awesome quality with about the best bang for the buck I've seen.Glass quality - like other Vortex optics, the glass is really good. No noticeable discoloration, minimal edge distortion, and really clear. Looks great at 25/30 yards and at 250 (best LOS I've got for comparison). Eye relief is good for a prism. Anyone that complains about the eye relief hasn't squeezed up behind the "king of prisms" Trijicon ACOG (4x) that makes you feel like your eyeball needs to be pressed against the glass. This is comfortable very quickly.Weight - this is the lightest 5x out there and even with the Cylee RDS, it is lighter than a RDS/magnifier combination and significantly lighter than an LPVO.RDS mount - even though I hate that they used the Dokter cut, mounting the RDS directly to the body of the prism gives a rock solid lockup.Options... with a micro RDS mounted forward on the optic, there is enough space to get behind it with NODs and the optic sits high enough that a PEQ15 or DBAL sized unit will stay out of sight. As on option for a night capable system, this seems to work although that is still in testing.Overall, this is a great option. My next choice would be the Primary Arms SLX 5x microprism, but that is twice the price and the piggyback RDS mount is flimsy. I much prefer the ACSS reticle, but the BDC on the Vortex is functional when zeroed at 50 yards. The Vortex Spitfire gives good flexibility and is well worth the cost. Is it right for you? You be the judge.

The reticle did not work properly and the red dot did not illuminate. Contacted Vortex, sending unit to Vortex for repair/replacement. Folks at Vortex are wonderful.

Bought mine through PSA so it won't say verified purchase, but I do in fact own this optic.I'm a Vortex fan boy, this is my 8th optic from them and while I do admit this has some flaws, it's still a solid little optic and I don't dislike it. Glass is very clear, reticle is clean & easy to see, adjustments are smooth and have just the right resistance, MRD mount works well, the list goes on.Really wanted to write this to tell people that yes you absolutely can put flip caps on this, and easily. Vortex says they don't make flip caps for it bc of the objective bell design. (okay, so fix the design, duh!?) but aftermarket ones can be made to work easily. You need a 34mm cap for objective lens, 36mm or 37mm cap for ocular lense (I used 36mm and as you can see it fits pretty snug). Should pop right on with some resistance. I personally added some E-6000 adhesive around inside edges of caps before installing just to ensure they don't shift when opening, but YMMV. Working great!A couple cons I'll mention here, although they don't matter that much to me personally:-biggest con is, as others have mentioned, the eye relief and eye box. It is admittedly not very forgiving, but I view this as a problem I can overcome with training. Besides, as you can see in the pic, I attached a micro red dot to the top for closer ranges, so if I'm using the 5x tube I likely have time to make sure I'm lined up properly.-related to previous point, yes you do need to mount this very far rearward and shorten length of pull. I would have had to put this on a cantilever mount to keep my rear BUIS were it not for the fact I decided to go with a unity mount with integrated rear BUIS due to setting my rig up for NVG use.-riser included with scope physically would not fit onto my pic rail, which I've had zero issues mounting ANY other optics or accessories to. So I believe this riser is either out of spec entirely or just VERY far on the tight side of the acceptable tolerances. This didn't affect me, as I intended from the start to put this on a Unity mount. But still worth mentioning you should expect to purchase a different riser mount to put this on.-1moa reticle adjustments are a bit of a bummer, wish they were 1/4 or even 1/2, but I can put up with it. Especially considering it's going on a milspec ~2moa rifle. Not ideal, but acceptable.-reticle should have been designed with either a dedicated ranging element such as is found in their strikefire lpvo, or better subtensions so as to facilitate accurate range estimation. As it sits, the subtensions are ROUGHLY equal to 1/2 the width of avg human torso at each given range, so it's usable, but it won't provide adequate precision for first round impacts at all ranges imo. I integrated a range finder into my kit already, so I'll accept this as just a rough backup option.All in all I love this setup and think for the money it's absolutely a winner! If they'd fix those couple cons I explained, I'd happily pay another $100 (or more).