Review: Meopta Optika6 4.5-27x50 FFP RD rifle scope

The six-fold magnification range in Meopta’s Optika6 rifle scopes endows them with versatility reserved for only a small portion of shooting optics. In the case of the 4.5-27x, it also means this long-range hunting scope is a good bet if you stumble across game almost at your feet.

As if to reinforce the point, the scope I tested was fitted with the MRad1 reticle, which is nearly identical to the MRad2 reticle Meopta reserves exclusively for the Optika6 1-6x scope. In other words, we’ve virtually got a high-magnification scope with a close-shooting reticle, at least at face value.

Meopta Optika6 4.5-27x50 review — The Meopta is a good fit for something like the CZ 600 Range. Insets: The MRad1 reticle in first focal plane as it appears at about 20x (left) and at 4.5x magnification

But the reality of the situation is a lot more nuanced than that, and what at first seems a conflicting setup turns out to make perfect sense in a high-magnification scope built into a relatively compact body and loaded with features that, all up, create a multi-tasking tool for long-range hunters and competitors.

It’s worth saying now that this is not an expensive scope, retailing for $1485. Don’t think the quality isn’t good, either: this is a Meopta, made in the Czech Republic, and the optics and mechanisms work perfectly.

The Optika6 is a reasonable 361mm long and has a not-too-big 50mm objective lens. The side turrets span about 92mm in total and the top turret pokes up 23mm higher than the objective housing, so you can’t call them compact. The scope’s weight is fairly hefty at 935g, but I guess you expect that.

Despite all this, the Optika is not nearly as large as many high-magnification scopes, something I enjoyed about it in the field.

I tested it primarily on a CZ 600 Range, no lightweight either, but the 6kg rig wasn’t awkward to carry slung over my shoulder as I sought distant goats in the hills — not that I ventured more than a kay from the car at any one time.

In sighting in, I’d learned that the 0.1 mil-rad adjustments in the reticle were spot on and perfectly repeatable, so getting a bang-on zero at 100m took very little time. Having chronographed the ammo and checked with a couple of ballistic apps, I shot further out and was rapt to find the come-up clicks recommended by the apps were a perfect match to what the scope gave when I dialled up the elevation.

The Meopta has a zero-reset facility that doesn’t require tools for elevation and requires just a coin to loosen the turret top for windage. A small Allen key in the box enables you to quickly set the zero-stop. I screwed in the throw lever on the magnification ring, not so much for the way it speeds up adjustments but for the way it provides a tactile reference to where you are in the magnification range. There are four mounting points for it; I chose the one that centred the lever vertically just under 15x magnification, my chosen baseline for the shooting I’d be doing.

Almost everything I shot was at 300-400m, a self-imposed maximum because of windy conditions. It was just a matter of ranging the target, dialling in the elevation, aiming mid-chest and dropping it.

I never needed more than 15x for this and often pulled it back to open up the field of view. At 27x, the view isn’t quite 5m wide at 400m so finding targets gets challenging. But if you’re shooting small targets way out at 800m or more, that top end would be gold.

The MRad1 reticle is in the first focal plane, so it grows with magnification, maintaining the same distance between its mil-rad markings. The cascading windage and elevation scales make shot adjustment simple when you see your fall of shot. If the wind sent a shot wide and I saw the dust, the reticle immediately gave the new aiming mark to use based on where the bullet landed.

Only once did I encounter goats up close. They were 50m away and I pushed the throw lever left to 4.5x magnification, took a knee to rest on and used the thick, open circle around the centre of the reticle to aim my shots. The inside of the circle is 20cm in diameter at the target: kill size on the chest of any medium to large game.

The reticle at this low magnification is too small to properly provide much detail anyway, and suddenly I realised why this design made sense. At high magnification, the open circle had never been in the way or distracting, but now it better indicated my point of aim.

This incident, however, highlighted the main compromise of this scope: field of view is reduced so that even at 4.5x, from 50m away, my sight picture was 3.7m wide. A typical 3-9x scope would show a view about 4.5m wide at 4.5x, and you’ve got leeway to wind back further to increase it. The Optika6 gives you a lot but you can’t have it all.

Parallax adjustment, achieved with the left turret, brings focus right down to 23m and all the way out to infinity. The left turret also turns on the illumination of the four bars and dot in the very centre of the reticle. There are six levels of brightness with an off position between each.

As for the optical quality, Meopta is always excellent. The Optika6 features all the usual high-grade Meopta glass, coatings and sealing, providing great clarity to the very edges of the view, and 91% light transmission.

With a 50mm objective and a small 1.9mm exit pupil at 27x, you’re not going to be shooting goats after sunset at 1000m. Depending upon how far ambient light has dropped off, you’ll see the transmitted light start to fade somewhere in the upper half of the magnification range. This is not a scope you buy for spotlighting; it’s strengths lie elsewhere.

Your eye position gets more critical at the top end, too, but you’ve usually got plenty of time to settle in when targets are that far away.

The Optika’s body is a single-piece 30mm tube made of durable aluminium alloy with dull black anodised finish. Construction of the whole scope feels flawless and the quality gives the impression that everything will last a long time.

I’ve written up the Meopta in the context of a centrefire rifle but mounted on a precision rimfire rifle — which I did for a while with the CZ 457 LRP — it’s great for super-fine accuracy on small pests from 23m to as far as your rimfire will reach. The Meopta was also great for precise shot placement from a Weihrauch HW100 .22-cal PCP air rifle.

The Meopta Optika6 4.5-17×50 is packed with beneficial features. It is extremely well priced and will suit any hunter who knows the majority of their shooting will be at medium to genuinely long ranges, with the odd shot well within 100m.

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