HIKMICRO FALCON: High-performance Thermal Spotter for Finding Wildlife

The HIKMICRO FALCON FQ50 has arguably become the industries most popular thermal monocular due to its advanced thermal imaging system that brings an industry leading 20mK sensor paired with a high image quality. Today, let's focus on the editor who have took the device out and puts it to the test in a variety of scenarios, including woodland stalking, high seat stalking and rabbiting at night.

Feedback from Mark Ripley:  I Instantly Took A Liking to the FALCON with Its Impressive Imaging and the Smooth Zoom.

It is always exciting to get a new piece of shooting kit in your hands, particularly when you've got a trip approaching where you are able to put it to the test. The trouble we always find though with thermal optics is that you never know what to expect until you actually look through the monocular and try it for yourself. 

Here is Mark Ripley's feedback on this product: From HIKMICRO early night viewing products, the brand has gone from strength to strength offering an increasingly impressive range. As a well-established business, not only do they offer excellent customer service and the quickest repair services, but also have a hunger to offer the very latest in cutting-edge technology. 

I'd been told that the sensor was a 640x512, 12-micron sub 20mK NETD. Basically, as explained to me, the lower the mK NETD number, the more sensitive the sensor. In other words, it can detect more subtle differences in heat changes so it creates a more detailed and clearer image. For comparison, I believe I'm correct in saying, the next best spotter on the market is a sub 25 mK NETD. The long and short of it is that the FALCON offers an exceptionally good image, as I quickly discovered. The unit comes nicely packed into a rigid soft case along with two 18650 batteries (each giving a 5-hour run time) a wrist strap, a nicely padded neck strap, lens cloth, and charging lead.

First Impressions

The first thing that struck me, when picking it up, was that it was very nicely made, felt solid, and weighed in at 635 grams. The padded neck strap makes carrying the FALCON comfortable even over long periods and the unit fits in the hand nicely with the four control buttons all well-spaced and easy to find and use. Focus is by means of a rotating ring around the objective lens, with a built-in hard plastic lens cover. The initial start-up time on the FALCON takes a few seconds but it also has a standby mode where it will come back to life in the blink of an eye. With a 5-hour battery life, plus a spare, it's not going to die on you during an average night's shooting.

In the Field

Taking it out in the field, I instantly took a liking to the FALCON with its impressive imaging, and also the smooth zoom, which retained good clarity even on the higher end of the magnification range. The unit offers a 2.6x optical magnification plus 8x digital zoom, effectively doubling the magnification at each increment to give you a total magnification of 20.8x. This is good to see as some other units on the market, from other brands, offer a magnification range of around 2.5-20x, and yet past 5x you're just turning a blurry blob into a bigger blurry blob.

With a detection range of an impressive 2600 metres on a man-sized object, IP67 waterproof rating, 4 colour palettes, recording to 64 GB internal memory (with audio), Wi-Fi, and a 1024x768 HD display, you're getting a very impressive thermal spotter at an even more impressive price.

Feedback from Digby Taylor: Never Seen A Monocular with Such A Crisp Image Before.

Digby Taylor, the editor from GunsOnPegs channel, share the real test experience. Rather than detailed going through all the positives of the monocular, I thought it most appropriate to share some live footage from a couple of recent trips so you can judge for yourselves.

Stalking Fallow in Woodland

One of the difficulties of getting on to fallow bucks in August is the thickness of the vegetation in woodland environments. On a recent trip out, we found locating fallow prickets relatively easy using binos and understanding their regular haunts.

Actually approaching and setting up a safe and reasonable shot was nearly impossible. So many pairs of eyes on lookout duty. Here are a couple of screen captures from that day which enabled us to see the fallow before they saw us. Unfortunately, we bumped into a herd of does between us and the bucks we were after which spooked the opportunity.

Spotting Fallow from A High Seat

Having struggled during the day, we setup in a high seat with a good view of the whole valley as we approached sunset. As the light started to fade, here is where the spotter really came into its own, particularly its 3x zoom. We were able to direct another rifle onto a herd nearly a mile away that appeared from a block of forestry which we would never have been able to see with the naked eye.

I asked the stalker we were out with to see what he made of the FALCON FQ50 model; he said he had never seen a monocular with such a crisp image before.

Hunting Rabbits with A Thermal

With lamp-shy rabbits doing damage to newly drilled cover crop rescue mixes, using a spotter absolutely transformed my rabbit control. No need for headlights in the vehicle and plenty of time to set up. I found the app linkage with the live thermal view on the dashboard enabled the passenger with the rifle to know exactly where the rabbit was, lining up the shot before a quick flick of the headlights enabled an effective outing.

Keep your eyes peeled for the next product review from HIKMICRO coming shortly or find out more on the FALCON monocular here.

*Before purchasing any thermal or digital day & night vision device, please make sure you adhere to the local ledislation and only use it when it is allowed. Our ambassadors come from various countries and travel a lot, which allows them to test different devices. We do not encourage or support the illegal use of our devices in any events.