Scope borrowed from fellow creator Alex (Affordable Optics and Rifle Reviews) for testing & evaluation — not purchased or requested from Athlon. Athlon Optics did not see this video prior to publication. This is an unboxing and first-impressions look only — not range T&E. A follow-up was planned for tracking, reticle time, and shooting footage. Specs and pricing as taped; verify today’s listings before you buy.
Hey Squat Squad — over the last decade we’ve watched long-range and extended long-range shooting explode. Rifles that can shoot sub-MOA got cheaper, and the glass that actually lets you see and dial at a thousand yards followed. One of the companies that landed hard in that wave is Athlon, especially with the Midas TAC line competing in that popular roughly $500–$800 window. In this video I’m cracking open one of the best-sellers at that price: the Athlon Midas TAC 6-24×50 FFP.
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Why this price point matters
Yeah, some folks still scoff at calling five-to-eight-hundred “entry level.” Fair. But traditionally you were looking at closer to eight hundred to a thousand just to get the trio that actually matters past a thousand yards: glass clear enough to see the target, enough internal elevation, and a first focal plane reticle so holds and misses scale with magnification. That’s the lane the Midas TAC is fighting in — and it’s why this model stayed so popular.
I didn’t buy this one or request it from Athlon. It fell in my lap when I borrowed it from my friend Alex at Affordable Optics and Rifle Reviews. Format for this video: open the box cold, give authentic first impressions. Separate video for the full feature breakdown, range footage, and bottom line — leave questions in the comments so they can get folded into that follow-up.
What’s in the box
Packaging is straightforward. Inside:
- The scope itself
- An Allen key with what looks like three extra screws for the zero stop
- A lens cleaning cloth
- A solid manual — and this one actually earns its keep
The manual walks you through using the zero stop and zeroing the scope, and it includes a reticle printout so you can see what each hash represents for holdovers. Read it before you start guessing — it’ll answer a lot of the common questions.
First impressions: tube, finish, eyepiece, power ring
This is a 30 mm tube. Finish is a nice smooth matte, in line with other Athlon optics I’ve handled. Outside visual: well made, no obvious defects out of the box.
Working rear to front:
- Fast-focus eyepiece: smooth, no issues. Texturing is grippy without being sharp — nicer balance than the Athlon Cronus eyepiece we’d looked at, which felt more aggressive. No locking ring, but unless you’re deliberately twisting it, it doesn’t shove in under normal handling.
- Magnification (6–24×, 4× erector): little adjustment fin on the ring. Super smooth — almost a tiny bit of drag, a little on the light side for the price point, but you really don’t need a throw lever. The fin is enough.
Parallax, turrets, and reticle
Side parallax focuses down to about 10 yards, which surprised me — a lot of scopes in this class start around 25. That low end is genuinely useful for airguns and rimfire. Knob is a bit on the small side, but movement is super smooth with no stiffness, out to infinity (there’s a pretty quick jump from about 500 to ∞).
Elevation turret (MIL sample): marked up/down, 10 mils per rotation. Tactile and audible. Not the most surgical clicks in the world, but more precise coming down than going up, and you can feel/hear it hit the zero stop. For the money, fairly impressive.
Windage: capped on this one. Smooth, tactile/audible, and no wiggle between detents — very nice.
Reticle: looks good on first glance. Roughly ten mils of elevation stadia for holdovers, but the numbers only go 2 / 4 / 6 / 8 — no “10” labeled even though there’s room. Minor irritation. No illumination on this Midas TAC variant. If you need illum, look elsewhere; for most daylight long-range work I generally don’t use it unless you’re shooting dusk/dawn or holding against a big dark target that swallows the hash marks.
Warranty, weight feel, and who it’s for
It’s clearly marked Made in China — Athlon doesn’t hide it in microscopic print — and it comes with Athlon’s lifetime warranty. From what I’ve seen, whether you ping them on social or contact them directly, they do a solid job answering questions and taking care of issues.
By feel (no weight printed on the box in this clip), it sits in that mid-weight zone — roughly high-20s to low-30s ounces if I had to guess — not featherweight, not a boat anchor. Pairing vibe: this is the kind of glass I’d happily put on a roughly $400–$500 bolt gun, or on an AR you want to stretch past carbine distances without stacking optic cost past the rifle.
Bottom line from the unboxing: it exceeded expectations for what I thought we’d get at this price. Next step in the plan was mount it, get range time, run a tracking test, and spend more time with the reticle before returning it to Alex for his longer-term take.
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Keep squatting.
Have you run a Midas TAC 6-24×50 (or the 5-25 / 4-16 siblings) at distance — how did tracking and glass hold up for you?
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