Ep. 434 | Nocpix Rico 3 H50R Review **H50R vs. H50R Pro!**

Hey y'all, it's Thursday. That means it's another episode of late night vision show every Thursday for the last 434 weeks. That's right. This is episode 434 got a brand new scope, which means it's a brand new review and help me kick it off. The owner of Outdoor Legacy, Jason Robertson. Good evening. Fine. Solo, solo, fine fellow. I don't know what I was trying to call you, man. I don't know either. I hope it wasn't a bad word, but that's okay. Guys, welcome back. We've got another great show. We are going to be doing a review today. It's going to be of the Nocpix Ricoh 3 H50R LRF. Now you may hear that and go, y'all just did a review of that a few weeks ago. It was a brand new scope. So why are you reviewing it again? Well, this is sometimes where the naming of these optics gets a little confusing. We reviewed the Ricoh 3 H50R Pro LRF, and this is the non-pro model. It's just a regular model. And you say, what is the difference? Guess what? We're going to get into that. So stick with us. We're going to go through the specs. We're going to show you some videos. We're going to get to the walk around, show you the scope. And then when we get to that discussion, we're going to go over briefly what the differences are in the pro and this model, which is the non-pro, the regular model. And you can decide if you need to go back and watch that pro video, if that might be the right scope for you. So with that, I want to say real quick, you may be, you know, surfing on right here. Maybe you did a search. Maybe we just popped up and you say, who are these guys? And what is this show? I'll keep this brief, but I just want you to know this is a late night vision show, and it is powered by Outdoor Legacy. Hans mentioned that, that I am the owner. Hans is a longtime salesman here at Outdoor Legacy. And this is what we do is we test, use, and sell thermal optics. That is the day job. So we would love to have your business at Outdoor Legacy. It's 877-350-1818. If you want to talk to us, it's outdoorlegacy.com. If you want to go to the website and see everything there, obviously you can make a purchase right on the website, but I'll tell you what we're going to invite you to We would prefer rather than you just watch this video and say, this is the right scope for me, I'm sure of it and buy it, which that would be easy and it would be great. But we want to make sure it's the right scope for you. So we suggest that you give us a call again, 877-350-1818. And we will be happy to talk to you on the, on the phone, discuss what kind of rifle you're putting it on, what state you're in, what animals you're hunting, what distances or the caliber, all the different things that we want to know that will help us make sure you're getting the right optic for your needs. And then we can help you with that purchase. And we would love to have your business. And we offer that same customer service after you purchase the scope from us for all of our customers, for as long as you own that optic, we are happy to provide all the tech support that we're able to on that scope. So again, give us a call or go to the website, OutdoorLegacy.com. Love to have your business. Hans, this is, uh, this is a great scope. I mean, I don't think that we review any scopes that we don't think are great, but this is a really good optic, it's got some nice upgrades to it, and I know a lot of people are going to want to know, as we just said there in the beginning, what's the difference in this and the Pro? Yeah. So really, and before we talk about the differences between these two, we will let you know that there are four different brand new Ricoh 3 models. I'm not going to get into all the details. We already reviewed the Pro, the H50R Pro, like Jason said. Today, we're going to refer to it as the non-Pro model. This is the Ricoh 3 H50R. There's also the Ricoh 3 H35R, which is a 642 power base magnification scope. So probably for a different type of hunter than what this scope is for. And then you have the Ricoh 3 L35R, which is the 384 resolution. So they have one 384 resolution, they got three 640 models in the Ricoh 3. So the big difference is, uh, between these, uh, the, the non-Pro model, the H50R non-Pro, which we're reviewing today, and the H50R Pro, the main thing that everybody's talking about is the autofocus on the Pro model. So this model we're reviewing today does not have autofocus. Uh, it also, the other big difference is the Pro model has ocular zoom that is, uh, tied into digital zoom. So it's got ocular zoom integrated, just hit my mic, integrated in with, uh, digital zoom, the non-Pro model that we're dealing with today does not have, uh, ocular zoom. So no autofocus, no ocular zoom. And also Jason, it's worth being said because there might be some confusion if you open your box. If you look at the spec sheet, this is going to say that this is a three power base magnification, but what's kind of cool, it gives this scope of review today, gives you the ability to switch between three power base magnification and three and a half power base magnification, and you will know the difference because if you were on three power base magnification, you will have a rectangle display screen. If you are on three and a half power base magnification, you will have the screen with the rounded edges, almost like a semicircle, but the rounded edges. So whether you prefer rectangle screen or rounded screen or three power or three and a half power, it's kind of cool that you can have the, uh, the option to choose whichever one that you wanted. And I actually preferred the three and a half power with the rounded edges on the screen. So that's what you're going to notice. The pro model does not have that option of changing the, uh, the screen type and the base magnification. So Jason, you want to clean that up? I want to, I know that sounds really confusing. Hans, you did a great job. I couldn't say it any better. Uh, you've got to see it. It's not changing the optical magnification. It's basically when you make it a three and a half power and it extends the edges there, like Hans said, that are more of curved. It's like the whole screen just gets a little closer to your eye as kind of the feel that you get. And again, it just makes that animal look a little larger. So it essentially does give another half a power of magnification. Uh, and it comes down to two things. Do you want a little more magnification? Uh, or do you not, or do you prefer, like Hans said, that the straight rectangular, uh, edges, or do you want the curved? Uh, this is, this is not a big deal, but it's just something to know. You might pull your scope out of the box and it may say three and a half power. And you go, oh my gosh, I thought it was a three power. It is, you know, and if somebody, if your buddy says, well, mine's three and a half. Well, that's what it is. You can go into the settings and change that. And in the menu, uh, there is an option in, in the main menu, the, the full menu, not the quick menu and the full menu, which is a long press of the menu button. You can go in there and go to a customization feature where you can change the size of the screen. So it's easily done, not a big deal. And the great thing, if you buy it from Outdoor Legacy, you can call and we can help you with it. That's the best part of it. I want to talk to you about some more things you can change. We're going to get into that first. Let's just go ahead and jump into the specs, uh, some video and a walk around at the scope and kind of give you a little more info, uh, before we get the carts too, too far ahead of the horse. Uh, it is the Noctpyx Ricoh 3H50RLRF. Uh, it is $4,499. Again, this is a brand new scope for August of 2026. And that's when we are recording this video right here. At the end of August 1st of September. So the resolution is 640 by 512. It is a 12 micron sensor. It's got a 60 Hertz refresh rate with a 50 millimeter lens, three power base magnification, a digital zoom that goes all the way up to 24 power. And it does have that lever or some people call it a shark fin, uh, digital zoom, where you can go up in like 0.1 increments of digital zoom. So very, very fine, uh, adjustments. If you want that field of view left or right at a hundred yards is about 46 foot. It's got a detection range. That's going to be of something about the size of a human, uh, at 2,840 yards, according to Noctpyx does have that 2560 by 2560 ultra high resolution display screen, uh, seven color palettes, multiple reticles does have the built-in laser range finder. It's good out to 1600 yards. We'll talk more about the LRF. This is a big improvement over the previous Ricoh one and Ricoh two models has the ballistic calculator app. Uh, it does have all the normal features, video, audio recording, streaming to the app, all of that. It's got a two battery pack system. Now this is a different, uh, I shouldn't say it's got a new battery pack system with two batteries. This is a new system compared to the Ricoh twos and the original Ricohs as well. Uh, the good news is, is that these batteries are better in two ways. One, they last up to 10 hours in optimal conditions, which is a much better battery life than the Ricoh twos and the Ricoh ones, and also they don't require a cradle charger. You can plug a USB-C cable straight into the side of the battery. It's got an LED on it, lets you know when it's fully charged. So you can charge that on the go, anywhere in your truck, whatever you don't have to have a cradle charger. And it does come with two of those batteries. So you've got all night of hunting, even in cold temperatures. Uh, the overall dimensions are about 9.2 inches long, 3.4 by 3.4. Uh, weighs right about 32 point, 32.7 ounces. So just a little over two pounds. Uh, it is rated for down to negative four degrees Fahrenheit and it's rated for a 300 wind mag or a seven millimeter mag and like all Nocpix optics, it does come with the IRAE USA five year, uh, bumper to bumper warranty with that five day, uh, turnaround time to repair or place it. Basically meaning, uh, once they get your scope in their hands, they have five full business days per their policy to either replace your scope with another one or repair that and get it sent back out to you that helps you have the least amount of time, uh, down. If you ever do have a warranty issue again, coming in at $4,499. Yeah, which is actually a thousand dollars less than what the Rico twos, uh, we're at, and I think maybe the Rico twos when they may even first come on the market might've even been even a little bit more expensive than that. But people are say, you know, is the, the three better than the two? I would say, I don't usually say definitive statements like this when it comes to newer models. This one absolutely is the picture image quality as some of the, the best image quality, I think that you're going to see, uh, love the new, the Jason, you were talking about the battery pack with the, you plug right into the USB-C cord, so you plug it right in. You're no more cradle chargers. Thank goodness. That's awesome. Very much improved laser range finder. So when you take all that into account, improved battery life and choose, uh, in a different battery charging process or system, uh, as well as the new laser range finder, the image quality being improved and the fact that this new model, which is most comparable to the Rico to, um, RH 50 are, which is most comparable, uh, $4,500 compared to that. The other ones were previous one that came into the market at 55. So very much so improved. I'll go ahead and already showed you the battery. Uh, we got the flip open magnetic plastic battery plastic battery cap. The eyepiece or not the eyepiece. I'm screwing it up. Jason, uh, objective lens cover protects your, your objective lens right there. Manual. Objective lens focus right here on top. The eye cup is very easily removable, removable. I would demonstrate it here on TV, but you got to turn it like 47 times. It comes off, but it's easy to do. We just got to turn it forever. Um, it does come with the eye ray, uh, or the knock picks. This is their return to zero locking quick release mount to throw a lever quick release mount and does lock very works very well. We take these scopes on and off rifles all the time. Jason, we've had this scope for a long time. We actually had it, um, a pretty good time before the actual announcement of the scope when we were doing our initial testing of it. And so this, this particular scope right here has been on and off many rifles. It has traversed the country just about, uh, in shipping process. And it's been used very much. The progressive, I like to call it progressive or incremental zoom throw lever right here. That's what you're going to use to magnify the image. It does it in very short jumps, which is great. Uh, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, and so on, which is much better, uh, than going from three to six to 12 to 24, because you may not have to, you know, what happens with digital magnification, if you don't already know, I'll tell you briefly, every time you double your magnification on a digital optic, you're cutting your resolution in half, unless you're using ocular zoom. Of course, this optic doesn't have ocular zoom. So using digital magnification on scopes, when the magnification doubles, you're immediately taking away half of your picture clarity and quality and resolution. So if you can jump up in very short increments and, you know, not going up to six power automatically, but going up to maybe you just need to go to three and a half power or four power, you're still keeping a large chunk of your picture quality, which is important, especially when you are using magnification, it's usually because you're trying to look at something far away, which you're going to need all your resolution to do that if you're trying to ID an animal. So that's a very good feature, really like the incremental zoom throw lever right there. Very, very important. I would say you have right here, a USB-C port for plugging the scope into the computer, if you want to, as well as for an external charging battery pack and your button layout on top, very large buttons, evenly spaced, raised, easy to find, easy to use at night. No problems there. And of course it does have an eyepiece diopter focus. Jason, I think that, oh, well, the laser rangefinder on the side, if you didn't see it in the previous shot, there you go. Very similar to the previous, the Ricoh 2s. They were all, I think actually on the same, same side, but this one's a little bit smaller. It doesn't hang off just quite as far as the Ricoh 2s. I probably should have said it in the beginning, guys. I'm fighting a cold. I've coughed. I've got a tickle in my throat. My eyes are watering. Your eyes are definitely watered up since we started. I am probably looking rough, but it's, you're used to that if you've been on this channel before. It's going around, man. That summer cold's brutal. I had it too. And it's, there's nothing like feeling like it's, you know, your head feels like November, but your body feels like deep August in Texas where it's 100 degrees every day. It's not fun. Well, so here's the thing. We've already talked a decent amount about the scope again and how it compares to the Ricoh 3. I want to have one last conversation about that and then the Ricoh 3 Pro. We'll quit, we'll quit talking about the Pro. But again, Hans mentioned it. I just want to reiterate it one time here and be done. The Ricoh 3 Pro is coming in at $5,499. The Ricoh 3 H50-R non-pro is coming in at $4,499, $1,000 difference. You are not getting the autofocus. You're not getting the ocular zoom feature. You may say, I don't really know what that is. Go watch our Ricoh H50-R Pro model review from a couple of weeks ago, and you'll be able to understand more. And you can decide if maybe it's right for you. If you're still not sure, again, we'd love to have your business. You can call us and we're happy to walk you through that. But moving on with this scope, you're getting a lot of features, a lot of quality, a lot of things going on here for $4,499. You know, when the previous model of this scope was closing out, it was essentially at this very, very close to this price, okay, when it was going away. And now you've got this new model coming in at a very similar price, just offering, again, very similar scope, but offering those upgrades, some of those new features, as Hans has said there, like the upgraded laser range finder, it's very, very quick, very responsive. Now it's up to 1,600 yards. That's something a lot of people had asked for. They wanted a faster responding laser range finder that would work at longer distances. You're getting that now. Again, ballistic calculator and all those things that were already there. So I do think this is a nice upgrade. The battery life's a big deal as well. There's something else you can do. And I'm going to mention this going back to Hans mentioned, you can customize whether you want the three power or the three and a half power based on a rectangular screen or a curved edge screen. And again, it's just something you can play with, decide what you want. Another thing that this is not brand new, some other scopes have done this, but I do think it's a cool feature is you can turn off different color palettes. And that way, let's say you're like Hans and I, and we only use black hot and white hot. I do not care anything about the rest of the color palettes. If I was building the scope, I wouldn't put them in there. And there's guys right now going, oh my gosh, I only use red hot or I only use, and that's fine. It's one of those, again, chocolate and vanilla things. But what's cool is it is like I built a scope because now I can go in and disable all of those other palettes. And if I hit the button to switch palettes, it's only going to change between black hot or white hot. Or if you're somebody who's never going to use anything but one palette, you can leave only that one on. So you don't have to worry about pressing a button and accidentally changing it. I'm going to add one quick thing here, and this is something that I'm going to say this and some people are going to be like, what do you mean? This is something that is in there. And I'm going to talk about it because if you buy this scope, you're going to find it. It's in all of the Ricoh 3s. But it's some customization to the buttons and what those buttons do. So you can go in and say, I want the forward button with the up arrow to do this, not that. I want the rear button to do this, not that. Personally, it scares me because I think it's going to be a customer service nightmare. Just full transparency, whether you're bought from us and you're calling us or you're calling Knockpicks USA, talking to them. I think there's going to be some issues where you're customer service, including us trying to walk people through things, and we're telling you to press a button and it's doing something different. There's going to be confusion. So I don't like it for that reason. There's going to be a lot of end users who I think do like it. They're going to say, oh, I want this button to do that or this button to do that. I don't think it's a big deal. I mean, nobody is normally very upset that one button turns on the laser range finder and turns it off. I just want to mention this scope does give you some of those options to change those things. But I would advise you that if you ever get confused about your scope and you need technical support, you call your dealer or you call Knockpicks IRA USA, definitely let them know if you've changed any of those button layouts, because it could cause a lot of confusion and frustration for you as the end user when they're telling you to do something and press something and it does something different. So it is an option in there. But being able to go in and change the three power to the three and a half and adjust the color palettes and some other settings in there, I think that's pretty nice. You're getting more and more user control over these scopes than before. Yeah, I think for the overall customization, again, these are things that you don't have to do. I mean, these are deep within the menu. Oh, yeah. You don't have to customize these buttons to different things. You may want to customize the base magnification, like Jason said, it's very easy. The advanced customization of the buttons, changing the functions and all that, it's probably more for your advanced thermal hunter that has a lot of experience with this kind of stuff. If this is pretty brand new to you, I wouldn't get in there and mess with a lot. I think there's a lot in there that is very personal preference oriented, but the way that it comes out of the box is just fine. Not overly complicated. Now, Jason, the big question is, I would say, is for people, because we've already been taking a lot of phone calls. We've sold a lot of these Ricoh 3s, the pro and the non-pro. They've been obviously one of the most popular scopes of this late summer. It was just released at the beginning of August. And August typically is not a very happening month or busy month, but I would say that it's important that you understand the differences between the pro and the non-pro. And what the people that are calling, do I need to get the pro? Is it worth the money? Of course, they ask what the differences are, and we already talked about that, but is the pro worth $1,000 more? And so we've already talked about the autofocus. If you don't know what it is, go watch our pro review. But the question is, is it worth an extra $1,000? And I would say the ocular zoom does give you a little bit of an advantage, especially I would say at distance, shooting further distance, maybe IDing at further distance. So ocular zoom does give you a little bit of a boost there with the pro model, I would say. The autofocus is a great tool. But the people that are choosing the non-pro model, the one we're reviewing today, are the people that say, you know what? I want 640. I want three power. I want a laser rangefinder. I like the form factor, and I don't want to spend over $4,500, or I don't want to spend over $5,000. Those are the people that are typically choosing this optic, and it's fantastic. Might be one of the best under $5,000 right now. We'll decide that later in our best dev shows. But yeah, a lot of people, Jason, just want to know, is it worth the extra $1,000? And it is to a lot of people, and it may not be to others. Well, I want to talk about the pro anymore, because I know guys are going to say, you talked about it more than you did this one. But I would say this, the two features that you're getting in the pro are two features that the market has never seen. So what I mean by that is, every single other thermal scope that anyone has ever used didn't have those two features, and everybody survived. So are you like crazy to not buy that pro? No, because it's two cool new features, but nobody's ever had them. So you will definitely survive with a fantastic scope. If somebody asked me that question today, and they say, which is the best value for the dollar? Which is the bang for the buck? I think this is the scope. I mean, it's like, you can save $1,000, you can do without those features, you don't really care. Like, hey, sounds cool. I think you're just getting a lot of value right here. Again, like you said, to each their own. And I think it depends, and depends on how you're going to be hunting. And there's some reasons, like we talked about in the show, where the autofocus would be great. But this scope right here for $44.99, like you said, three power, one of the best 640 thermal images on the market with lots of features. Big display screens. Again, changing that magnification a little bit by adjusting your screen layout. There's just a lot going on with this scope that really makes it appealing to a lot of guys that are going to be doing a lot of shooting. I would say, once you start getting into that 60, 75-yard range and further, a lot of guys are going to lean towards that three power, especially if it's going to be a lot of stuff over 100 yards. You might look and say, well, I may shoot 100, 150 yards, but a lot of it's going to be in that 40 to 100 yards. That might be something where you take the field of view and look at that Ricoh 3 H35 arm, the wider field of view and the two power base mag. Again, that's something we're happy to talk to you about and help you figure out. Three power is a sweet spot for a lot of people. I think that NotPix USA knew what they were doing when they got this scope with all the jam-packed features that it has and came in at this very aggressive pricing. Yeah. I also want to address something real quick, too, before we close it out. The laser range finder is fantastic. Works great. Much improved from the Ricoh 2 models. There's been a lot of talk about how great they are on social media, how great the new Ricoh 3 model laser range finders are working. We've got a lot of videos of it in action. Works very, very well. So if you are interested in purchasing the brand new, any of the Ricoh 3s or any thermal scope, by that means, if you are interested in purchasing any optic, night vision or thermal, you need advice and you want to purchase from Outdoor Legacy, we invite you to call us. What we do, we produce the shows. We put out a lot of information for free. But we do that because a lot of you call and they say, hey, I watched your show. I watched your review. I watched your best of. I'm listening to you right now, right before you called. Get that quite a bit. We do that because we want to encourage you to call us so we can talk about what scope's right for you. When we kicked off the show, Jason said, if you fell so inclined and watched the review, you want to hop on and buy it right away, that's great. Most people do call us so because they want to make sure what they're buying is right. We're talking about very expensive purchases. And these are fun purchases when you're talking about spending money on your hobby or your passion. But you want to make sure that you're making the right decision. That does usually take a very short phone call. And like I said, you don't have to. If you know what you want, you've been doing this long enough. By all means, hop on the website, OutdoorLegacy.com. Very easy checkout. You can do it there. But sometimes people get confused because they see reviews and they're like, yep, that's the optic for me. Or every review they see is positive and they say, oh yeah, every review you watch, you're convinced that's the one for you. But they're not all the same. They're not right for everybody. So we invite you to call 877-350-1818 and we can talk you through the process very painlessly. And we are not high pressure at all. I can promise you that. We probably should be a little bit more than we are. But we're going to talk through it. We're going to give you some good options. And ultimately, you're going to make the decision. We're just going to make sure that you don't make the wrong decision. So again, 877-350-1818, OutdoorLegacy.com. Please subscribe to the channel on YouTube, on Spotify, wherever you're watching. We would love for you to follow, like, and share. And you can find Outdoor Legacy on Facebook and on Instagram and on YouTube. But Facebook, I would say, is the most important right now because that's where all of our special, whenever there's a special that is being run by the manufacturers, they seem to come very quickly without a lot of warning. Sometimes we don't, most of the time, I'd say, we don't get a lot of advance warning. It is basically the night before and say, hey, we're running a sale on whatever. So that's where we're going to put it first. That information is going to be put out first on Facebook. And you need to sign up for the newsletter. If you go on to OutdoorLegacy.com, you can sign up for the newsletter. So you will get an email if something new is coming out. You won't be over emailed. Jason, we talk about that all the time. I looked in my email box today and there is a company, I'm not going to name any names, that has been going right to my spam folder. But every single day there's another email from a company. You're not going to get that from us. Only the important stuff. Only on big occasions. Once a month, typically, on a newsletter. Maybe a couple if it's Black Friday or something like that. Crazy. Anyway, go sign up for the newsletter. And you can find me, Hans, on YouTube and on Facebook and on Instagram, HansETX, which stands for East Texas. That ETX is not my last name. It's where I'm from. So anyway, Jason. All right, guys. Hope you enjoyed this review. We hope to see you back here on this channel next Thursday. Between now and then, y'all stay safe.