We take the Garmin and put it through a series of tests. In addition we pit it against two other chronographs, the industry standard Oehler Model 35P, and a Lab Radar unit. Check it out and see how they performed.
I have the Oehler 35P and the LabRadar chronographs. I'd offer that the 35P setup time can be greatly reduced. I have placed a piece of parachute cord that is 10 feet in length, on the sensor closest to the shooting bench. I secure it the bench end with a weight and move the sensors away till the cord is taut. Then I place a laser bore sighter into the bore, and position the firearm on the target. Hold a piece of white paper behind the front sky screen and move the tripod to center the projected laser dot on the paper. Do the same for the far sky screen, and then recheck the front sky screen. This assures that you won't shoot the sky screens. While this process sounds lengthy, I can perform it in about three minutes. The LabRadar I have is pretty reliable. When I was using it at a very busy local range, I would pick up shots from other shooters. To make it consistent, I don't use any acoustic trigger, but rather a JKL Precision magnetic trigger, and no longer pick up shots from other shooters. This would also address the issue with wind messing up your outboard microphone. I also use a 10,000 mAh portable battery pack to power the unit, so I never run out of power (less than $20). Great review of these tools.
The Garmin will shift frequency if it detects an interfering machine nearby. I've used two Garmins side-by-side and they worked fine. They recorded less than one foot per second difference. I have been loading for more than 60 years - this is the chrono form factor I've been looking for all that time! FWIW, I also have every issue of Handloader magazine! I signed up when I first heard about it. The beautiful magazine covers on the earliest issues were works of art.
It is an amazing unit I have been very pleased with it and have sent probably thousands of rounds through it at this point. Our Garmin had no issues recording next to the labradar as well which was very nice for this video. I was a little worried about it when we first started. Thank you vveyr much we love hearing that and greatly value the support we simply couldn't do it without the support of good folks such as yourself. Indeed I hope that one day the same could be said about our more recent covers as well. I am really trying to get creative with the setups. If you ever have any advice on that I am all ears. Thanks for watching and taking the time to provide feedback! --Jeremiah
I have the Oehler 35P and am very pleased with operation and ease of use, set up takes a little time but all in all, I see no reason to change. The chronograph is such an integral part of developing accurate and safe data, I always figured the Oehler to be reliable because all the big kids use them. This was a great video with a fair comparison across all three, each has their quirks it appears and you learn the ropes through using them. I also have an Oehler Model 10, with the twist knob yes/no readout and conversion tables, same set up as the 35P, but a little more work to extrapolate the velocity, Their is no logging shot strings, SD, ES, math is your friend.
The Oehler 35P as stated in this video truly is the gold standard, I have used one for over a decade with no issues. It is still the most accurate chronograph on the market especially if you increase the spacing of the skyscreens it simply can not be beat in terms of accuracy. They all do have their quirks and things that you have to get used to but all in all they work very well. I remember the model 10 for sure I learned how to calculate SD and ES because of that very unit all good things to know how to do longhand. With smartphones and calculators longhand math is a dying skillset. Thanks for watching and sharing your experiences, every person who does so adds a lot of value to the videos we product and we greatly appreciate it! --Jeremiah
The Lab radar and Oheler both take substantial time to set up. 30 seconds for the Garmin sold me. Also have to look at the form factors. The Garmin is very compact compared to the other two. Great video once again Jeremiah
I have no doubt you will love it, we have had nothing but good feedback so far and we have had several writers test them as well with excellent results. Good shooting and happy handloading! --Jeremiah
I do agree with you the Labradar folks were not the easiest to work with in this industry and I know there has been a lot of negative press around their unit since the Garmin was introduced it is certainly going to be hard for them to recover from that even with their new unit. Plus the Garmin truly does work and it works very well. Thanks for watching and taking the time to comment! --Jeremiah
I bought a Bullet Seeker Mach 4 about a week before the Garmin was announced. It was like $1200 by the time it shipped. Its now like $600. Its small and clips to 1913 or arca rails and has no screen and bluetooths to your phone. It was been great indoor and out but I wish I had the Garmin. It also sits on a tripod.
that is tough luck for sure! I know a couple of folks that did the same thing with the labradar and now they can't seem to give them away. Which is unfortunate but at least now you have a chronograph and out of the different options out there I have heard a lot of good things about the Bullet Seeker. Best of luck to you in your shooting and handloading! --Jeremiah
Great video, Jeremiah! Comprehensive and choc-full of great information. Rec'd my Garmin Zero a few days ago. So easy to set up. Have only run 10 rds of 22 LR through a Marlin M60 so far. I have 5 other cronos, not all of which are still working. My first one, Oehler 35P, circa 1990, I still use. Did have to return it for repair a few years ago but I still use it. My Labradar is currently defunct. Have not, will not ever buy a Magneto. Thanks for this vid! While I still have your attention, Jeremiah, I have been a Wolfe Publishing subscriber for decades. Some time ago there was a problem with the delivery (post office's fault). I had to order about half a dozen back issues. Rec'd them all except Handloader #336. Called the office back and they said they had no more of that issue. I have actually lost sleep over this because I have saved every issue. Do you know of a way I can get ahold of HL #336? I will pay $25 for this issue. Thanks for anything you can do.
Thank you very much for the kind words and feedback on the video. I only wish we would have had a little more time to run a higher round count through all the chronographs but we thought the more variety of cartridges was a better approach than higher round counts. I do love the Oehler 35P and I am sure that I will still be using it alongside the System 89 as well. However, the Garmin is such an easy setup it appeals to my lazy side. Thank you so much for watching and taking the time to comment and for your continued support! Give us a call 928-445-7810 and ask for Howard, i'll let him know you'll be calling. We have some in the warehouse now, they may have been out for a show as we just got back from the NRA show but I know we have some back there. Loose no more sleep and don't pay 25 bucks for the back issue we have you covered. In addition we also sell digital versions of our back issues should we sell out of the print copy but I know it's not quite the same. I hope that helps you out and if you run into any issues just let me know I still do read every comment it's just a matter of finding time to reply. Thank you again for your avid support, it is because of good folks like you that we are able to produce these magazines and videos. --Jeremiah
It was a lot of fun to put together! Some might say too much fun! Glad you enjoy watching the videos though and thank you for the continued support! --Jeremiah
I have all three chronographs reviewed. There is no comparison, the Garmin is smaller, lighter, faster and easier to set up, accurate, and more reliable than the others.
Great video, but I believe there is an error in your math on the .22 lr. The Oehler avg is almost 879 (878.66) not 872, which makes it much closer to the Garmin.
I've had mine a couple of months now. Works great. Only thing you can't do with it is rapid fire, it's not picking that up. I even shot a 1937 Daisy BB gun and it recorded that!
I was very impressed with it as well, I did shoot some wax bullets from a modified 45 Colt case and it picked those up as well in spite of the velocity being only about 350ish fps it was very impressive to say the least. All in all it is a great unit and it sounds like most everyone is equally impressed. Thanks for watching and taking the time to comment! --Jeremiah
@@HandloaderTV I had the Lab Radar, bought it when it went on sale around Xmas. Was way too big so I sent it back to Brownells and they sent me back the Garmin. The instructions say you need a pretty good distance to get a reading but I tried my BB gun in the basement at about 15 feet and the indoor range I tried it in was only about 12 yards, 36 feet.
Garmin is a Great tool but the app is not great. Many translation issue and no way to select your language or measurement standards individually. No joules reading. If you mark to leave out shots to calculate an average it still will include all of them when you export , which is useless
I think you need to feature the FX Outdoors True Ballistic Chronograph. Computes BC, give trajectory, etc. I love the BC calculator as you can use it to determine the stability of the projectile. It has not had any missed shots, where my Lab radar has. Needs no external microphones. It is limited to just over 4000 fps.
LOL have to be careful not to hit the uprights.. I learned that on the #10 all thread is a good replacement for the rods on most skyscreens... You and I talked on the phone and emailed a few years back about coated lead bullets. You listened to an old 'curmudgeon' and we had some great discussions. You even invited me to visit if in the area,. I really like the way you present things. Back i the day we had little to go on except maybe the gun mags of the time which I read cover to cover but.. they were not always ....uh.. 'scientific'? in fact they rarely gave any real reasons for why they thought this or that worked. Handloaders today are so fortunate to have mountains of data... but that can be a curse too since some of it is 'sketchy' at best. I did not get a chrono until like 20 years ago? till then it was all guessing. I have binders full of targets and chrono data with different guns and loads. Mostly? my guesses were pretty close (like in horseshoes and hand grenades) but there were surprises. I knew for instance that if jacketed data showed a certain pressure. then cast would be a bit lower (everything else being close to equal) but chronos are the greatest thing ever.
I use the recoil sensor on the lab radar and have yet to have it fail. The mic had some inconsistency and a battery pack on the lab radar lasts several outings on one charge
I must admit I have not tried the recoil sensor for the lab radar, the ease of setup and efficency of the app in the Garmin chronograph sold me after reviewing tons of data between the labradar and oehler 35P the accuracy was more than acceptable so this is likely the chronograph we'll be using. That said if you already have a labradar and have the kinks figured out I wouldn't rush out to get a Garmin unit either. The battery pack certainly does last a long time especially if it's not old and worn out like ours. The 100 degree plus summers really kill batteries here unfortunately and the labradar has had many many hours on it. Thanks for watching and taking the time to share your experience it certainly adds a lot of value to our videos and we appreciate it. --Jeremiah
My Air Arms TX200 22CAL developed a problem. I needed to use my Oehler chronograph to test the air gun. My Oehler 35 takes forever to set up Storing it is difficult. After a morning of iffy results, i ordered the Garmin Xero chronograph. I figured out my problems with the rifle using the Garmin. Sometimes, even at night. The only time i might use the Oehler is to test my shotguns. Even at that, I plan to try the Garmin.
I do love the Oehler and there are some tricks to help with setup such as taping the cords together and labeling them but it is still a bit of a chore for sure. To that was the Garmin Xero Chronographs main selling point the ease of setup and compact size. The Garmin will pick up velocity data for shotguns but it can be a little erratic and sometimes will pick up the wad and not the shot from what I hear it works way better with slugs but still can be a little finicky at times something to keep in mind when using the Garmin. It was for that reason we did not show any shotgun testing in this video. Thanks for watching and taking the time to comment! --Jeremiah
@HandloaderTV I took my Garmin Xero chronograph out today with my 410. The velocity was right where I thought it should be. I set it for rifle and set the speed category. My 1/2 oz load in 2.5" Winchester AA hulls was 1290 fps. The Garmin seems to work fine with shotguns.
The doppler setting on the LabRadar will something work when the conventional setting do not work. If I was buying s chrono today it would be the Garmin, but since I have the Lab Radar with an external battery pack, phone chargers work well, I'll keep the Labradar.
Must a person have a smartphone to use the Garmin chronograph? I don't have a smartphone and I don't want one, but I want one of these Garmin chronographs because they look so easy to use. If the internal screen of the Garmin will give me the shot velocities, extreme spreads, and standard deviation without a smartphone, I will be happy.
I do have a magneto speed and it is very very accurate however due to the point of impact shift from attaching it to a barrel it is very challenging to get it to work with handguns we excluded it from the test since half of this test was with handguns it would have been a little unfair for it to compete head to head with the other choronographs. Thanks for watching and taking the time to comment! --Jeremiah
I have not personally tested it however, according to the other writers we have on staff who have tested it. They all say it works great in an indoor range. Great question thank you for watching! --Jeremiah
Yes, I’ve tested it as close as 25 feet without issue. Garmin claims minimum 25yds but that’s obviously conservative. Neighboring lanes shooting in the same velocity window can cause false reading so keep it as far away as possible.
@@HunterMikeWI Garmin States 5 feet as a separation to the next shooter, not 25 yards.20 (not 25 )yards is the minimum target distance to track a bullet
I absolutely agree with you in fact to be honest I'd take it a step further and say SD values for anything less than 10 shots is almost worthless. Unfortunately ammunition is expensive and we didn't have the time to shoot huge shot strings for this video. So we though a wide variety of cartridges and setups was a better way to showcase reliability and accuracy. If you add all the strings up as a cross comparison you can at least get some statistically significant data on the units. Thanks for watching and taking the time to comment it is nice to see that people are starting to place more value on more shots fired, more data points and more information. --Jeremiah
3 shot groups can’t tell you if something is good. It sure can tell you if something is bad. Nothing wastes ammo like shooting a 20rd group when you knew after 3 it was going to chuck a 2” group 100fps under your target velocity.
Tried to watch the Handloader Garmn test. After being forced to watch more than 5 minutes of ads for products I’m not interested in - without option to cancel them - I persisted in watching. This Handloader channel then recycled the same 5+ minutes of commercials. I finally realized that Handloader TV seems to be just clickbait. I’m a capitalist and understand sponsorships, but this is ridiculous. Opting out of commercials a watcher is not interested in is the only thing that will bring me back. In fact I’m so disgusted with this bait and switch scheme that I’m unsubscribing from Handloader TV. Not an honest approach.☹🤬
All of the advertisements displayed on the channel are chosen from Google or RU-vid. Sadly RU-vid does not allow for us to pick the advertisements or have much of any control over the ads. In addition to that If you remove the Google advertisments they will turn them.back on and in addition to that your videos will not perform as well if they are not serving Google ads. It's how they make their money sadly. I share your frustrations I hate the ads they serve on RU-vid they are junk ads. You should be able to skip the longer form ads on RU-vid though. You shouldn't have to sit through more than 45 seconds of advertising. I assure you that our videos are not clickbait we test everything thoroughly and are completely honest and without bias in our reviews and information we present. We strive to put the best information possible in video format. I am sorry you had such a bad experience with RU-vid and I truly wish there was more we could do to control it. There is always the magazine which provides much more information than we can present in these videos and there are no un-skipable ads in the magazine. Thanks for the feedback and sharing your thoughts we do appreciate it and if it was completely in our control would certainly do something about it! Thanks, --Jeremiah
