Finding the right Laser Rangefinder (LRF) on a budget

Every long range shooter as well as every hunter should have one - a Laser-Rangefinder.


It's always nice and especially helpfull to know the correct distance between you and your target.
But finding a good LRF is not as easy as one might think. Basically there are two different sorts of equipment.

The equipment for the professionals. This is a group of Laser-Rangefinders for Police and Military. They are very good and very expensive. Prices far beyond 2500$ are the usual price range for a professional LRF. If you can afford such an equipment, lucky you. But often there are also some laws applicable which restrict ownership and/or use of such professional equipment.

Second there is the equipment for the average shooter which is affordable in a price range between 200$ and 1000$ but also comes with some drawbacks. So if it has to be an affordable Laser-Rangefinder, let's define what to look for to get the proper equipment for your money.

1. It's the distance, stupid!
There are a lot of cheap Laser-Rangefinders available on the market below the 1000m distance. As a long range shooter you will definitely need a LRF with a minimum measurement range of 1000m. Everything above this distance is better! Everything below this range is more or less unusable and a waste of money! Try to find a LRF with a measurement range of 1400m/1500m and you are on the safe side. The increase of the measurement range increases also the price of the device.
I personally had the luck to find such a device and can say that it is possible to measure up to 1600m under good conditions without any problem.

2. No esoteric battery!
As you will get used to your Laser-Rangefinder and won't miss him in the field it's going to cost you some batteries. So it should be a cheap and easy to get battery. No fancy button-cell-batteries which are hard to get and quite expensive. I recently found a LRF which uses an ordinary 9V battery to measure 1400m and the battery didn't let me down for a year.


3. Mounting is important!
The easiest way to measure ranges beyond 1000m is mounting the Laser-Rangefinder onto a tripod or a monopod for better handling which makes an 1/4" tripod mount important. LRF without tripod mount are IMHO more or less useless beyond a 800m/1000m distance.


It's also a good idea to work with quick-release plates for mounting your LRF to a tripod as it makes things easier and quicker in the field.


4. Can you see the target?
The optics is where the shooter has to make the most compromises if he wants to stay below 1000$. Where the professionals have LRF-binoculars which rivals the best military binoculars, we get only a monocular with basic specs. Usually the affordable LRFs are equipped with 7x25 optics. 7x magnification is fine but a lens diameter 25mm is suboptimal especially when hunting under low light conditions. If you want better specifications it's getting expensive.


5. Accuracy
The average LRF provides a accuracy of +/-1m over his measure distance. This tolerance ought to be good enough. But testing the tolerance should be done. I happend to come across some (really cheap) asian suppliers of LRFs were I found tolerances of +/-5m quite beyond what the manufacturer was promising in his specs.

My LRF has meanwhile replaced my binoculars in EDC situations and I really don't want to miss it as I really got used to know the distance.
Working with a LRF gives you a good feeling for distances and, properly trained, makes it easier for you to guess distances where no Laser-Rangefinder is at hand.

For more basic information about the function of a Laser-Rangefinder I would like to point you to the Wikipedia entry Laser-Rangefinder