Review: Leupold Mark 4HD 4.5-18x52 rifle scope

The Leupold Mark 4HD 4.5-18×52 is one of those rifle scopes that exceeds expectations once you start using it. It’s a high-end scope for long-range competition and varmint shooting that you know should be good but it turns on a performance you’d give a standing ovation.

This version has the M5C3 turret system with PR2 reticle graduated in milliradians (MIL) and mounted in the first focal plane — but more about those in a moment.

Leupold Mark 4HD 45-18x52 PR2-MIL rifle scope review — The Leupold Mark 4HD is a top pick as a competition scope on a rimfire or centrefire rifle

The optics are from what Leupold calls its Professional-Grade system, that is, it’s the high-end stuff and it is excellent as well as robust.

The clarity is outstanding. I could count the wires on a fence 1300m away and see where the chicken mesh started. Such clarity relies on good contrast, which is another strong point of the Mark 4HD. Colour, too, is well defined in the scope, and it all points to the top results Leupold is getting from the lens coatings it puts on its HD glass.

Leupold boasts that it has gone to lengths to reduce glare inside the Mark 4HD and they’ve succeeded. Looking as close as possible towards a setting sun without having it shine straight down the lens, this scope is as good as the best I’ve tied this with; there are very few that can handle it while letting you see your target well.

Leupold doesn’t quote light transmission figures or the like as most European makers do, but after comparing this one against a few other scopes it’d have be about 90 percent or better, though I admit it’s a very difficult thing to judge by eye, which is the only measure I had.

The 52mm objective mens — a fraction bigger than the typical 50mm lens — provides that tiny bit more light to meet your own pupil as ambient light drops and magnification increases. It’s unlikely you’ll see any reduction in brightness below about 7.5x magnification and it’d take a seriously gloomy sky to put you off your game in any daytime long-range shooting.

I won’t dwell more on this because we can simply say it’s a bloody good view through the Mark 4HD.

Given the potential for recoil in many long-range calibres, Leupold has endowed this scope with very good eye relief of 97-102mm. It’s so good I realised I had to mount it further forward than I did most other scopes.

M5C3 TURRETS

Leupold has managed to make its turrets reasonably compact compared to many similar scopes, and even though they’re less than 18mm tall they allow plenty of adjustment, which all occurs inside the turrets so they don’t wind in or out themselves.

Naturally, they can be reset to zero after sighting in. They also have a zero lock so that, without looking, you can turn them to the stop and know you’re back at your zero settings for both elevation and windage.

When you get there, the uncapped turrets lock so they cannot be accidentally moved. To initiate adjustments yourself, just push in the button protruding from the upper side of the turrets and they will rotate.

The elevation dial turns just short of three full rotations, or 28.7 MIL. When you push the release button from the zero position, it stays slightly proud of the turret for its first rotation, drops in level for the second rotation, and disappears inside for the third, giving you a visual and tactile way of knowing how many times you’ve gone around the clock. Again, a great idea to speed up your use of the scope in challenging situations.

You can also turn the elevation down by 0.5 MIL for critical aim at less than your zeroed distance.

The windage turret will only turn half a revolution each way, moving the crosshairs up to 5 MIL left and right, ie, 50cm at 100m, 1m at 200m etc, which will be ample unless you’re shooting in a hurricane.

The dials turn with light resistance that makes them quick, yet both the coarse clarity between clicks and the large white markings help you set them exactly where you want them without constant overcorrection. Leupold has done a good job of this.

The reticle adjustments were accurate and repeatable, just as you have a right to expect from a scope of this quality.

One thing to note is that there’s more room for adjustment than the turrets can handle on their own, partly because of the generous range available inside the fat 34mm main tube: 36 MIL of elevation and 18 MIL of windage. You need to use the supplied Allen keys to get into the turrets to take advantage of this (or to reset the zero), but once set there should be enough adjustment in the turrets to keep you going for as long as you’re using the same rifle and cartridge combination.

PR2-MIL RETICLE

The PR2 reticle provides a good balance between being detailed enough but not overcrowded. The test scope’s was in milliradians but a minute-of-angle version is also available.

The main markings give you quick reference for 0.1, 0.25, 0.5 and 1.0 MIL measurements, with 0.1 MIL handily translating to 1cm for every 100m away your target is. There are smaller reference marks, while the main central part of the reticle covers a 10 MIL range left, right and down. Above the centre dot, it will measure 2 MIL.

Details of the PR2-MIL reticle as provided by Leupold

Being in the first focal plane, the reticle’s graduations remain the same at all magnifications. When you zoom, the larger appearance of the reticle does’t impinge on your view of the target, especially with the tiny 0.05 MIL dot in the middle, which in turn has half a MIL of open space around it.

The reticle shrinks too much to permit easy reading of the numbers on it, though at close range this shouldn’t matter, and while the centre of aim becomes a bit indistinct at 4.5x it’s very rare that you’d wind back this far in circumstances where this would make a big different, either, especially in competition.

Down at 4.5x, I mucked around with targets as close as 20m (about the minimum limit of parallax adjustment, and so the minimum distance Leupold designed the scope for) and didn’t have much trouble with the reticle’s fine lines. The only real handicap became apparent when I pushed the limits on a heavily overcast, low-contrast day with dark targets in shadowed areas, and all it did was slow me down a tiny bit.

The PR2 reticle is not offered with illumination, although there are other reticles that have it in the Mark 4HD range.

For quick, long-range aiming corrections without dialling the turrets, the PR2 will guide you for almost every scenario you might encounter. Alternatively, when you have time to carefully measure your target and then dial in corrections, it will help you do it without having to do much mental maths.

PARALLAX ADJUSTMENT

The side-mounted parallax knob is large and rotates through about two thirds of a full rotation to take you from focus at 25 yards (call it 20m) right out to infinity. This allows reasonable gaps between the marked increments (25, 35, 50, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1000, infinity).

The numbers don’t perfectly correspond to a range but they’re close — and I don’t think there’s ever been a scope that was accurately dialled so that you could use the focus as a rangefinder.

But what the big dial does, combined with the Leupold’s great optical clarity, is make it very quick to get the parallax set while you look at your target through the lens. The dial turns with fluid smoothness and a pleasant amount of resistance that facilitates settling well on your mark.

OTHER DETAILS

The magnification ring is a little stiff to move but then again you don’t want it getting turned accidentally as you’re moving from place to place in a hurried competition, which can easily happen with the throw lever that you’d invariable fit.

That throw lever, of course, removes some of the effort from turning the ring, and it’s a thoughtfully designed lever with a fat diameter of 11mm, rounded top edges and coarse chequering, all of which make it that much better to use than the skinny sticks on most scopes.

It’s a big scope at 37cm long, but that’s not over the top for this kind of optic, and its width and height are both quite compact compared with many — something Leupold rightly boasts about.

Nor is it overly weighty at 780 grams, which should be no impediment on a typical long-range competition or varmint rifle.

The matte black finish is tough and apparently long lasting, and the quality of the scope overall is extremely high in every detail. It comes with a lifetime warranty which Leupold is keen to point out applies to performance, not just physical integrity, and if you ever sell the scope the warranty continues to the new owner. Importer NIOA has a Leupold workshop here in Australia so your scope wouldn’t have to go back to the USA.

This is one of those rifle scopes that performed better than I expected once I stopped looking at the specs and started using it.

That makes it easy to say that it’s sub-$3000 price is money well spent. Prices vary dealer to dealer but my local gun shop, Mudgee Firearms, retails it for $2880 and it stacks up well at that. There are certainly cheaper scopes with similar specs but the Mark 4HD’s clever design features, its utter robustness with reliable backup, and its outright performance justify spending more on it.

It’s a scope that should work well and absolutely does.