Back when there were not many OEM scope builders and there was not a new scope “manufacturer” entering the market every few months, there was a small company called Mueller Optics that stepped into the market offering some good values on decent scopes. We reviewed their first tactical scope, and it did fine, but then they released the Tac2 which actually was a pretty good scope that was manufactured in Japan and for the money, was a solid no-frills offering. When we discovered that Mueller was soon introducing a new Tac3 scope we began to look at their lineup again and noticed that they had upgraded their Tac2 a number of years ago with a new generation and they were clearing them out to make room for the new Tac3. We thought it would be a good opportunity to see if the new generation Tac2 was still as good of a buy as the original was and if it would entice us to try out the Tac3 when they became available. So we placed our order and prepped for the review.
The scope arrived in a simple box with only a single Allen wrench and no instructions. Our typical first step is to flip the scope upside down and look for the country of origin…and when we could not find it on the bottom of the tube, we looked at the eyepiece, and then everywhere, all to no avail. The country of origin was not indicated anywhere on the scope itself and then we looked to the box where it proclaimed “Made in China”. At first we thought that may have only been referring to the box itself, but some internet sleuthing revealed this newer generation of Tac2 scope was indeed made in China. Moving to a China based OEM from the Japanese OEM is considered a significant step down by the Sniper Central team as we have yet to find a good quality Chinese made scope that will pass the test of time. While this was a disappointment, we still approached the review with an open mind and tried to objectively evaluate the scope with minimal bias.
One of the good things about the original Tac2 scope was that it was a basic no frills scope that was modestly sized, reasonably powered (3-10x) and did the basic functions of a scope well. This version with its 2.5-10x magnification tries to achieve the same thing and the overall size of the scope is modest with a 1″ tube and 44mm diameter objective lens. The scope is matt black with a single green ring around the bell housing. Nothing fancy, just a basic scope with tactical features.
The eyepiece may look to be large, but it is actually just large RELATIVE to the smaller 1″ diameter tube. In reality, its smaller than many other tactical scopes. The eyepiece has a fast focus diopter adjustment that covers the full adjustment range in about 1.4 revolutions. The fit is tight and smooth as it adjusts out to its max range. There are no markings on the eye piece so you do not have any reference points if you were switching shooters with the same scope and wanted to change the diopter setting per user. It does have a hard rubber ring on the end to offer some protection in the event of a “scope kiss” during recoil, which may happen if used on a high recoiling rifle as there is only 3.25″ (83mm) of eye relief.
At the front of the eyepiece housing is located the zoom power adjustment ring with some serrations on it to aide with gripping and there is also a raised protrusion at the 5x mark that provides purchase for your fingers to use when adjusting the zoom power. The power markings are on the front sloped portion of the zoom ring, so the shooter needs to raise their head from behind the rifle to see what zoom power the scope is set to. The full range of power from 2.5x to 10x covers less than half of the circumference of the zoom ring providing a fairly quick adjustment.
In front of the zoom ring, there is 2.15″ (55mm) of scope tube for which to mount the rear scope mounting ring. As mentioned earlier, the tube diameter is 1″, which is not in vogue with modern tactical scopes, but with good quality construction and moderate zoom powers, it can still provide enough up elevation to perform suitable long range work. The tube is constructed of aluminum and is a single piece design, as far as we can tell.
The shoulder area where the adjustment knobs are located is small and rounded in shape with the three control knobs mounted. The elevation and windage knob are both a finger adjustable target knobs with full dust covers. The elevation knob, located on top, has 15 MOA of elevation per rotation with just a single level of number markings and without any sort of zerostop. There are some fine serrations on the top of the knob to help with gripping the knob and there are some indicator arrows on top indicating which direction is up and also indicating that each click is “1/4 MOA at 100 yards”, which is technically not a valid system. As 1/4 MOA represents .26175″ at 100 yards. The markings should either be 1/4 MOA, or 1/4″ at 100 yards (which has a slightly different meaning than 1/4 MOA). But we definitively determined which system it is in our shooting test below. This may seem trivial, but at long ranges, it matters.
With 15 MOA of adjustments, a .308 using the standard 175gr M118LR style load will get to a bit over 550 yards before it overlaps into the second rotation of the dial and the user then has to track how many rotations have been dialed in. There are horizontal lines under the knob to also help track what rotation the knob is on. Mueller indicates there are 90 MOA of adjustment, which is a lot for a 1″ tube, and our test scope had 93.5 MOA. The clicks themselves have an easy to hear audible click with a nice tactile feel, though there is a small amount of slop between each click.
The windage knob, located on the right side of the scope, is the same size and shape as the elevation knob and the same incorrect “1 Click 1/4 MOA 100 YD” marking on top. Both the windage and elevation knobs have four small set screws around the the circumference of the knob toward the top. The numbers only count up in one direction, to the right. The clicks themselves have the same feel and sound as the elevation knob.
Something that is new to this second generation Tac2 scope is that there is a side focus. The original Tac2 did not have an adjustable parallax and a side focus was actually one of the suggestions we made in our review of that scope, and now this generation has one. The knob, located on the left hand side of the scope is a larger diameter than the elevation and windage knobs and does not have a dust cover. There are adjustment markings from 25 yards up to 400 and then one final mark at infinity. We are baffled why a 2.5-10x tactical scope would have a side focus that goes down to 25 yards, as that is well outside the normal operating range of what this scope is intended to do. We would rather see some additional adjustment range on the higher end of the knob, especially as the adjustment area is very small from 400 to infinity. The adjustment through the spectrum is smooth, but again, there is a small amount of slop when you first move the knob.
In front of the shoulder, there is an additional 2.45″ (62mm) of tube length to mount the forward scope ring and then the tube tapers smoothly into the bell housing where the objective lens is housed. As mentioned before, there is a green ring around the bell housing, tying the scope and its markings into the green color of the Mueller logo. The bell is threaded to accept a sunshade and Mueller has some 44mm sunshades for sale on their web page, but they indicate they only fit the 8-32x44mm scope, which seems odd.
The optics look pretty good and fall in line with other scopes in this same price range. We do need to mention that the original version of the Tac2 featured a First Focal Plane (FFP) reticle which was a nice feature, but this version is a Second Focal Plane (SFP) scope, so the scope needs to be set at it’s maximum 10x for the reticle measurements to be accurate. The reticle itself is a classic mildot reticle, which we love for its simplicity, though it should also be noted that the reticle is in mils (Mildot) and the adjustment knobs are in MOA. So you have cross units to be aware of when using the scope.
The scope as a whole looks decent, is smaller and lighter than most heavy tactical scopes, and it checks some of the boxes needed for a usable scope. The finish is nice, and the fit is acceptable, with some looseness in the knobs themselves, but we haven’t seen anything yet that would warrant a complete dismissal of the scope. The only way to find out some of those critical aspects is to take the scope out to the range and run it through its paces and see how it holds up. So we mounted the scope to our traditional Remington .308 tactical rifle using a set of steel 1″ tactical rings and bore-sighted it to the rifle.
Our test day was a chilly Montana winter day, 24 degrees and overcast, but it wasn’t snowing during the test. Once the scope was zeroed to the rifle using Federal Gold Medal Match 175gr ammo, we ran the scope through the typical box test to check the tracking, which appears to be solid. We did notice that with a 20 MOA canted base, the elevation knob was low enough that we could not see any indicator tick-mark on the scope or knob to specifically indicate which click we were on.
We then ran our click adjustment size test firing one group, which measured an impressive .5 MOA, and then dialed in 20 MOA of left and prepared to fire another group. As we mentioned above, the adjustment sizes on the knobs were confusing and it was not clear if it was .25 MOA or .25″ at 100 yards. We fired our second group, which was again a very tight group just under .5 MOA, so the rifle was shooting well. We then dialed back in 20 MOA/20″ of right and fired one last round, which printed about .2″ to the right of the original group, opening it up to .7 MOA. The measured distance between the center of both groups was 21.26″. At 100 yards, 20 MOA measures 20.94″, so the knobs are clearly MOA and not IPY (Inch Per 100 yards). Now that we knew the knobs were in MOA, we calculated that the error in the click size was 1.5%, which is well within our normal 3% error that we allow for scientific error introduced by the group sizes of the rifle.
Using the rifle in the field and at the range again showed the optics were decent enough quality and the mildot reticle, located on the SFP, remains a simple and effective reticle. Many shooters will regard 10x as too low for long range shooting, but for a field rifle, and not a range rifle, the magnification is enough to be effective in a tactical environment out to 1000 yards, we do it routinely, and you gain the advantage of a wider field of view, better light gathering, and lower cost to go with it…we have written about this tradeoff many times. One thing that was highlighted with our field testing was that the side focus really has a small and tight range. Getting a good focus on targets above 400 yards can be finicky.
The final operational tests we do with a scope is to check for reticle drift while adjusting the parallax and zoom range and then test the straight line tracking when adjusting the elevation and windage knobs. To do this, we mount a bore-sighting grid to the rifle and then observe the reticle while we make the adjustments. With the reticle aligned with one of the cross points on the grid we started or test with the zoom ring. While it the reticle remained fairly solid, there was a slight flutter as it went through the mid ranges of the zoom power, in the 4-6x area, and it was very minor. Then with the reticle still lined up with a cross point on the grid, we did the same test through the full range of the parallax adjustment (side focus). This is usually where we see some significant movement of the reticle with lower end scopes, but this one was solid through the entire range until you drop below the 50 yard mark on the focus dial. Here the reticle wanders significantly…and we see this on almost every scope that has a parallax that goes all the way down to 25 yards. This is another one of the reasons we recommend manufacturers not to bother with sub 50 MOA parallax adjustment on a scope that is 10x or greater.
The last test was to move the elevation and windage knobs through a wide range while the bore-sight grid was still attached and watch to insure it tracked perfectly along either the horizontal grid line, for windage, or the vertical grid line for the elevation. The knobs did track nicely right along the lines, but as we went to the full extent of the vertical range, we noticed that the last 4 MOA of up elevation clicks did not move the reticle! This may not seem like a significant issue with a full 90 MOA of adjustment, but we view it as surprising, and not something we typically see and it is realistic to be at the upper end of the dial if shooting at long ranges. The knobs and their tracking and accuracy are strong, but with that noted anomaly.
While this scope seemed to function fine for the most part in our tests, we are disappointed that Mueller switched from a higher quality Japanese OEM manufacturer to a Chinese based one, and this was accompanied with flaws. The side focus is nice, but its range is compromised. The mildot reticle is perfect, but it is now in the second focal plane and has MOA knobs. The 90 MOA is a good amount and it tracks straight and true, but the last 4 MOA of clicks don’t do anything. The rest of the features are standard, and they work well enough, we would just prefer that they keep with the higher quality even at the sacrifice of features. With tactical scopes, you will always be better off to spend the same money on better quality than to spend it on the latest wiz-bang features.
Sniper Central
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