Review: Leupold VX-6HD Gen 2 3-18x44 rifle scope

Leupold’s second-generation VX-6HD scopes are an evolutionary improvement of one of the most highly specified and practical lines of hunting optics ever made, and if you’re serious about hunting with top-shelf gear you’ll appreciate how thoroughly well designed and built they are.

Get comfortable because there’s a lot to say about the VX-6HD Gen 2. Once you understand it, you will see why this 3-18×44 justifies a price of around $4500-$5000.

Leupold VX-6HD 3-18x44 review — The Leupold VX-6HD 3-18×44 is among the best scopes available for hunters who want precision, practicality and ruggedness

The simplest way to pick a first-generation VX-6 from this new one is by looking at the turrets. The new SZL2 turrets have little catches called SpeedSet levers built into them so you can release them without tools, a convenience when resetting the zero or changing pre-set CDS turrets when you, say, switch to a different load. The levers work a clever clamping system inside the cap, and their tension can be adjusted if required.

CDS (Custom Dial System) refers to Leupold’s excellent tailored turrets, which you can have made to exactly match the trajectory of your chosen load(s), and you get one free dial after buying the scope, plus the option to buy more. When you provide your load’s ballistics, the Leupold Custom Shop in Brisbane (yes, here in Australia) will make you a turret with range, rather than holdover, indicated on the dial, and all you have to do is dial to the target’s range and aim bang on. It’s a great service.

Anyway, those latched turrets are new, and they include the neat ZeroLock button which prevents accidental movement of the dial. Press it in before you wind in elevation or windage at will, and when the elevation turret completes a full turn and begins the second (on its way to as much as 38 MOA of holdover) the button retracts into the turret to give you a visual and tactile indication of how far you’ve gone.

The other clue to the new Gen 2 scope is its short, fat quick-throw lever attached to the zoom ring. It is far less obtrusive than the previous one, and less likely to snag on clothing etc.

Leupold says it has improved the optics in the new model. If so, the difference is subtle and not something I could pick without an old model to compare it with. Fact is, Leupold’s HD optics are bloody good, regardless, with carefully developed coatings that have evolved over time. More on this topic shortly, but the optics are ultimately the prime reason to pay all that money.

The 3-18×44 is a longish scope, measuring 35.5cm with its caps on — a few centimetres more than most but not an outrageous length by any means. On the other hand, it is fairly sleek, spanning 7cm across the side turrets, and the top turret rises only 17mm above the scope’s 30mm main tube. Its middle-sized 44mm objective is slimmer than the turrets are wide or high. By long-range hunting standards, that’s quite compact.

More importantly, this VX-6 is also relatively light, weighing 665 grams, less than a lot of scopes that don’t have the magnification or features of the Leupold.

The 44mm lens is what I’d consider a minimum for a scope that can zoom in to 18x. Anything less really hinders performance in low light. The smaller the lens, the smaller the exit pupil for any given magnification, and hence the darker the image. Leupold makes two VX-6HD 3-18x that are a better choices if you hunt in low light conditions, with 50 and 56mm objectives respectively.

But the 3-18×44 is brilliant in good light and still fine as the light fades if you’re not relying on the high end of the magnification range. I took one shot well after sunset, in rapidly fading light, at almost 300m and scored a kill on a deer that was difficult to make out against a non-contrasting background. At 18x there was not enough light to properly make out the deer but with my thumb dragging the throw lever left, I rapidly wound down the magnification until the view became very clear, then took the shot with confidence.

Looking afterwards, I saw that I’d come down to 11x magnification, still more than enough to confidently shoot medium game at that distance.

The quality of the glass is an asset that you particularly appreciate in those circumstances. The lenses create an image that’s crystal clear to the edges, and they exhibit no bad habits at all. Leupold does not make claims about light transmission but there’s certainly plenty coming through the glass, and colours are accurately rendered with nice contrast between shades.

Looking through the scope at a distant hillside while checking my notes, I spied a heap of goats I hadn’t realised where there in the shadows — and they were dull greyish goats, too, not white ones. They almost jumped out of the scope.

Side-mounted parallax adjustment is par for the course in decent scopes today. Leupold’s is well tuned, adjusting quickly and precisely into focus so you waste little time getting a clear picture if range changes. The adjustment ring turns firmly but smoothly around the turret’s centre, and the reticle illumination button on the end of the turret doesn’t turn with it.

That method of wrapping the parallax adjustment around the illumination setup and battery is part of the reason the Leupold is so much narrower across the turrets than many — though not all — scopes with both functions in the one turret.

The illumination button acts as the battery cover. It is rubberised and kind of profiled like a castle nut in order to match the special tool Leupold supplies to undo it so you can change batteries. The tool didn’t arrive with the test scope but I was able to unscrew the cover using my fingers and a bit of pressure, so it seems the tool isn’t strictly necessary.

Not that you’ll need to do it much. Leupold claims a battery life of 300 hours on full brightness and up to 1600 hours in minimum, but this is helped by the auto-off function which cuts power if the rifle isn’t moving for more than five minutes. As soon as it moves again, the reticle lights up.

You can of course work it manually. Press it briefly to turn on the Firedot reticle’s centre dot, and prod it one step at a time through the eight brightness settings. A long press turns it off, and when you activate it again it lights up at the setting you left it at.

The VX-6 will warn you if you don’t have it aimed in an upright position, which is going to make your shot veer off over longer ranges. To activate this feature, hold down the illumination for 15 seconds. Then, when the reticle is illuminated, it will blink on and off if the scope is fractionally canted left or right. For really precise shooting at long range, this is a great asset.

You get a generous 94mm of eye relief behind the scope, and it remains pretty constant through the magnification range.

That range is six-fold, hence the VX-6 name, and 3-18x is a sweet spot for all-round hunting with perhaps a slight predilection for longer shots in general. In Australia’s often open country, with shots often taken across gullies or over wide paddocks, it gives you the reach you need at all but the most extreme hunting ranges, and yet has you covered for all but the closest targets or thickest bush.

Your other VX-6HD Gen 2 options are 1-6x, 2-12x and 4-24x. (The 2-12x is a favourite of mine for hunting on foot.)

This test scope has the FireDot Duplex reticle, the slightly cheaper and much more simple option than the TMOA reticle with its hash marks along both crosshairs and the Boone & Crocket reticle with its holdover marks. The duplex would be my choice not just because I like the simplicity but because all windage and holdover can so easily be dialled in using CDS turrets with properly marked elevation.

The Alumina lens caps are superb. I usually ditch lens caps on my own scopes, figuring their contribution isn’t worth the fiddliness they demand in use, but not these. For starters, both flip up on strong springs after you give them a quick nudge with your a thumb. The rear cap has a hinged lever to release it; the front one has little tabs extending into reach, one each side for ambidextrous use. This makes opening the caps a process taking less than five seconds.

The caps are each held closed by a pair of little magnets, which gets around the problem of the wear that often develops in click-in closures.

When they flip open, the caps go back past 180 degrees, where they’re in easy reach without forcing you to look to flick them down again after a shot. However, if you want to move around with them open, give each an extra push till they lie flat on the lens bells and they will stay there.

The finishing touch on the caps is that the one on the diopter adjustment ring can be rotated independently of its thread so that once you’ve dialled in whatever diopter adjustment you might need, you can (with a bit of on-again, off-again mucking around) get it sitting upright. That’s neat!

Leupold builds scopes with a well-earned reputation for strength and reliability, factors that should never be underestimated in a hunting optic because of the rough treatment they often endure. I didn’t abuse this scope but from what I’ve seen, and having owned several Leupolds, I had no doubts it’d survive almost anything I might have done to it. The scopes are shock tested, and nothing about this one is plasticky, not even those lens caps (which are aluminium).

They are waterproof and fog proof, naturally, and warranted for life under a guarantee that Leupold is renowned for. And because the Australian distributor, NIOA, has its own official Leupold workshop (still, I believe, the only one outside the USA), any warranty issues are dealt with here, not overseas.

What keeps nagging at me is that Leupold has crammed all that toughness, the superior optical goodness, a 6x erector ratio, and all sorts of very useful features into something that weighs just 665 grams. Yet that in itself wouldn’t make this such a great hunting scope, but the versatile 3-18x magnification range and the easy accessibility of long-range accuracy thanks to the CDS turrets with their large and clear marking put this scope right up there for performance in the field.

I don’t usually pine too much for gear that’s above my pay grade but the VX-6HD is one scope I regret having to give back.