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Welcome back to a special edition of the Tier one podcast. We're going to do a gear review. My name is Brent Tucker. I'm the owner of frcc. We do cigars, we do coffee, we do bourbon. We do it better than anyone else. Use promo code tier 1 for 15% off. I also part owner and human performance TRT. Get in the best shape of your life with testosterone and peptides. Go to HP trt.com for that. Let's go. Welcome to the Tier one podcast. This is amazing. Dude, check this out. All right. I've been talking about this on the show for a while that we were going to give away a set of panos to our Patreon. I try almost every month to give something really cool away to our Patreon. So if you want to be a part of that and win it, all you have to do is join our Patreon. No additional signups necessary. Now, these panos, I didn't want to just give away the panos because that would be useless. You need the whole setup. I wanted you to, when you won these, to put them on and put them to use. So I scoured the Internet for the cheapest set of Panos I could find. And at muggerx on xe, I bought these things for $4,000. The lead time was, was a little long. And they're digital, they're not analog, but I'm going to walk through that. But first I'm going to go over the setup to attach it here. Again, going with a economical build, can you operate sufficiently for the least amount of money? Will it work? This mount I got off of Amazon, it's a GEX mill CNC PVS 1518 night vision mount. It's metal. Links will be in the description. I don't make any money off of it. I'm just showing you, you guys, what work, what doesn't work, giving you review. You can get whatever you want. Now, it's a metal mount. It's good on cheaper mounts. There's a lot of wiggle and this mount seems to lock it in place and has plenty of adjustment just fine. The helmet that it's all attached to, again, I got on Amazon. It's the tactical helmet with headset four in one. The link will be in the description. It's only 89. It's a plastic helmet. Of course, it comes with the helmet cover comes with the ear pro. And that is the setup. That is what we got here between the nods, the mount, the helmet and the ear pro. And finally we'll talk about it once I talk about the nods. But we needed some IR help and I went back to Amazon and I got this easy shoot 1600 lumens flashlight and IR combo with a pressure switch. It's got a pretty powerful white light and a visible laser. It also has an IR floodlight and an IR laser. So if you're going to go shooting at night, you're going to need IR and IR laser. I got that off of Amazon for 89 bucks. So I think between the mount was less than 100, the helmet was less than 100, this was less than 100. The nods were just shy of 4,000. I'm at 42, 4300 right now with this setup. So the big question is, does it work? Obvious. With my background coming From a Tier 1 unit I am used to to the best and working with from the original Panos to thermals, the thermal overlay with night vision. So I had to, had to take my perception of this and kind of take it down to not would I take this on a hostage rescue mission with Delta Force. But is it good enough? So again, these are digital. The difference between digital and analog. The analog will have tubes with intensifiers and they will fill up eyepiece on the back side. So when you're looking through it, the whole thing is full. These are four digital cameras inside here. So it does a good job of filling up the screen. I'll post a picture of what it looks like, but it's not as full as you would, let's say an L3. The clarity and the gain is good. I bought the little bit more expensive ones just because it had better gain is a few hundred more dollars was called the 99L if I remember right. And it has extra gain When I put them on at night. I was, I was impressed. I was impressed with the, with the clarity. Because it's digital, when you move your head there is a refresh rate problem. I don't think anyone else would notice it. Maybe it's just a problem to me because I'm used again to fifty thousand dollar pair of Panos. But if you move your head quick enough it will blur but it comes right back. It's just again something, something to. To know the deal breaker for this price. Absolutely not. The second problem that I had was it didn't get. If it got too dark then it would just overwhelm the nods. The sensors couldn't see enough and it would just black out. You don't have that problem with analog nods. Yes. The less Light that it has to intensify, it will diminish, but it never really completely goes out on you. And these do. And they kind of did at a. At a light level. That. That disappointed me. So I said, we'll have to bring light into the situation. And then that's where this guy comes in. As soon as I brought this in, no matter how dark, wherever I was at, of course, I'm just gonna bring my own IR light light to help these guys out. And that was a game changer. This was powerful enough. It had a good. Had a good spread on the flood. You could do the same thing by mounting an IR light on your helmet and giving it the IR flood light. If you give it IR light, these things actually work great. Surprisingly good. The battery life on it, I found to be about three to four hours. It's a rechargeable battery. That's good, that's bad. I don't think anyone is gonna go out hunting in these or messing around for more than three or four hours. Of course, on a mission that we would be on, we would be. We wouldn't even be halfway up the mountain in that amount of time. So being rechargeable, you can't switch out the batteries. You have to go back and plug it in and recharge it. But the good news is you don't have to buy batteries every three to four hours, which can also get expensive. This IR illuminator is also rechargeable, good and bad for the same reasons. The Ear Pro, which I knew was going to be cheap, but I put it on there anyway. The suspension on these to keep it onto your head is really weak, and they have no adjustment to it that I could find. And they would help to push the helmet onto your face and help with the weight of the nods. Because of that, the NODS did want to push down on my helmet a lot. So a simple counterweight on. On the back with the battery pack would. Would fix that problem. The harness on this helmet for 89 bucks was actually really good. I'm. I'm surprised at the. How comfortable it was and how easy it was to adjust it. So the helmet was a big win just to have something to carry your nods with. I just buy a different set of of earpieces to, again to help with the weight of it, to keep that helmet nice and tight against your head. But you could do the same thing with a counterweight to get the weight back on the back of the helmet. So it's not as bad. So overall, would I recommend these? Yes, I would. They do not, nor would anyone ever think that they are going to go up against special operation equipment. But for someone who is interested in digital night vision, whether it be these would be the 30 ones and you don't want to gamble on the price tag because you're not sure if it's even going to work. I get it. Don't worry. I did it for you. I'm dumb enough to buy these four thousand dollar pair of digital panos and then just give them away. So again, they do work. They do have limitations with how much they can see in certain darknesses and that's okay. We can fix it with IR illumination. They do have some disadvantages with the refresh rate. If you move your head real quick, it will blur, but that's all right. I don't think anyone's going on a hostage rescue mission anytime soon. Is it the best way to have a blast in the dark or protect your family or navigate at night? Absolutely. And for that I'd recommend it. We're going to do some more gear reviews coming up. Every time we have a Patreon giveaway, I'm going to review it and tell you if it's worth it. If you want to be eligible for those giveaways, all you got to do is join the Patreon links in the description. Thanks for tuning in guys.