Athlon Cronus BTR UHD Gen2 Riflescope Review

By Michael Marano

I’ve recently been curious about Athlon optics, and seeing how their quality measures up to other big-name optics manufacturers in the market. Once I found out they give a solid military discount, I knew I had to check it out!

I’ve already been running their thermal Athlon Cronus scope for night coyote hunting and have been really impressed for the price point, but this was my first normal piece of Athlon glass. I was prepping for an upcoming DMR 2-Gun match (check out the youtube channel to learn about it!) which has longer range AR engagements, so I wanted a scope that could provide all the normal tactical advantages, like dialing and zero stop turrets, parallax knob, good mil reticle, and a nice clear quality to the glass. After shooting pretty well at my first DMR/2-Gun style match I feel like I have a pretty good handle on the scope, so let’s dive in to it.

Things I Liked

Glass Quality seems really high. I felt like with this scope compared to my others in a lower price range, I generally needed less magnification than expected. For my DMR match I stayed between 8-10x magnification the whole time to help quicker target acquisition. In some other scopes in the next price bracket down, there’s no way I would have been able to do this so well. The crisp imagine the Cronus provides helped me acquire targets very quickly at distance in varying light conditions. When zoomed in to the max setting the view still remains clear, and allows me to see my bullet holes at 100 yards for zeroing and load development purposes (it’s kind of nice to stay in the seat and not have to run up to the target or set up a spotting scope). The glass also lets me shoot right up until dark, which is a critical feature for me. I have a range 30 minutes from my house and often need to go test some loads during the week while I’m getting prepped for an upcoming match. I don’t finish work until 5pm and with the winter daylight hours it really limits my range time. The Cronus glass quality helps me shoot up until the last minute in those low light conditions. I also haven’t noticed any chromatic aberration when shooting at distance. Spotting my own impacts is an ease out past 700 yards. From all I could tell, I was super impressed with the glass quality.

Features all seemed pretty standard, so I won’t blow them out of proportion. The dialing knobs and zero stop is nice but kind of an industry standard at this point. The turrets are nice and clicky so its easy to count your .1 mil increments under pressure, and hard to over dial. The parallax knob is nice and I found this to help me focus at a wide range of distances so I didn’t have to mess with it during a stage, I would just pick the middle range I was shooting and run with it.

I really enjoyed the simple mildot reticle, I am not a fan of the christmas tree style reticles and I feel like this struck a nice balance of providing me the holds I needed without completely crowding the scope.

It also took a beating during the DMR match, shooting out of truck beds, other obstacles, and quickly throwing it down to unholster sidearm and engage pistol targets. It’s been knocked pretty hard and taken no visible damage. If it did, I have the assurance of Athlon’s lifetime warranty to cover the damage.

Things I didn’t like

Sorry to be so lame here, but I have yet to find anything I didn’t like about this scope. It has performed completely as expected thus far. If I am being really picky, the parallax and magnification knobs are really tight and tough to turn, but I’d rather have it that way than being loose and getting knocked off.

Overall Assessment - Is It Worth It?

Coming in around the $2000 price point I totally think the Cronus BTR UHD Gen2 is worth it! I especially love it for the MIL/LEO discount price point, and bought a second one to run on my PRS rig! I really think this is a good option for folks looking for something between the Arken and Vortex Razor/Nightforce ATACR price point of upper 2’s and lower 3’s. With their lifetime warranty I don’t see a reason that this isn’t a great option for anyone in the hunting and shooting community, and with the MIL/LEO discount I think that this is even a better deal that anything else in it’s price range.

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