the mh-25 from ira has quickly become one of our favorite handheld and helmet-mounted
thermal monoculars today i'm going to do a quick video to dive into some of the details
of this particular thermal optic and why it is one of our favorite thermal binoculars
you guys can tell sitting right here i have the pouch this is what your ira mh25 is going
to come in now one thing i wanted to note before i dive into anything in this pack this is not an
exhaustive video i'm not going over every single setting how to run this unit there is a user
manual included with your mh25 and i feel like irae did a pretty good job inside of this manual
of showing you all the functions and features in how to use this unit in a very simple way and
ultimately that's one of the reasons i love this unit is it is extremely easy to use you also will
have a warranty card that does come with your unit the warranty if you would ever have any issues
would be fulfilled through ira moving on we're going to open up the pouch here and dive right
into this in the main compartment you're going to see the mh25 and i'm actually going to set
this off to the side for the time being and we're going to dive into some of the accessories that
are inside of this pouch one thing to note check our website for all the specifications all the
accessories and the pricing because all of that stuff is subject to change and as optics change
the accessories and packaging and things like that could change the best way to make sure you're up
to date is hit the link in the description and check out our website for all of that information
in this main compartment you're going to have a set of cables this would be for video out so the
mh25 does not have internal video recording if you want to record you'd have to get something
like a mini dvr and use this particular cable to record in your video it also has a remote control
you have a little lanyard strap this is for the bag itself if you wanted to carry this over your
shoulder or something like that in the front pouch we're going to have a couple other accessory cords
this particular cord is the cord that you would use an accessory battery pack we'll
talk about that in a second you're going to have a usb cord here as well and that is going
to charge the two nitecore batteries so these two nightcore batteries are super important i want to
take a second to talk about the batteries on the mh25 because this is sort of make it or break it
and you have to be careful what batteries you run in your unit while these might look like
regular cr123 batteries they have a higher voltage than standard cr123s so if you grab just a set of
cr123s and you attempt to put them in the battery compartment on your mh25 you're going to find
it is not going to work and the reason that they are not going to work is because they are 3 volts
instead of the 3.6 or 3.7 volts that you're going to find with rechargeable cr123a style batteries
one other caveat you have to be extremely careful about irate did offer an extended
battery pack for a period of time and they allowed you to run a different style battery
inside of the compartment the battery had more run time but it was still that 3.6 volts
the problem is it gave enough people room to put two of these batteries in place of
that one larger battery and you're actually going to amplify the voltage when you do that and you'll
burn up your unit you have to be very careful with these units you are not supposed to exceed 7 volts
and my rule of thumb that i've been running with is if i run an external battery pack and make sure
i purchase one that does not exceed 5 volts and that's a nice safe voltage you can run with this
unit without risking damage to your unit but you can also extend the runtime and the way that you
would do that is you would run an external battery pack like you would use with any cell phone
or any kind of smart device that you would carry around with you on your body this works exactly
the same so on the front of the unit here we have a usb port you would use the special cord that is
included with this pack which i will pull that out for you guys what makes this cord so special is it
has a 180 degree turn on the front that allows you to put that into the front of the unit and
the back side here is a standard usb plug so you would plug this into your external battery pack
this would get plugged into your mh25 unit one thing i wanted to note is make sure you don't
have a battery inside of your battery compartment when you do that or else it will default onto the
battery power and your unit will die and you will wonder why because you have an external battery
pack plugged in the reason why is you still have a battery in the battery compartment you might be
asking yourself why i'm talking about external batteries so much and the problem with the mh25
is the battery life so right off the bat with the batteries these rechargeable ones you're
going to get about an hour and a half run time and realistically what i notice in the field when
it's cold is i get about 30 minutes of runtime and that's it so if you're doing sets all night
and you're hunting all night for eight ten hours you're quite literally going to need between 10 to
12 of these batteries minimum and you're going to be changing them between every single set
that to me is super annoying so what i prefer to do is run this cord with the mh25 and a battery
pack and you can easily get eight 10 12 hours of run time depending on which milliamp hour
style battery you purchase so i'm looking at the unit here going over some of the basic functions
you've got an eyepiece this is the side that you would look into and then on the front objective
you've got a cool little iris thing it looks pretty neat on analog night vision this is super
helpful because it helps with the focus i haven't noticed much actual benefit from running the iris
when we're talking about running this particular unit in the field one thing that is nice about it
though is when you're done with the unit you shut it down you can close the iris and it is going to
protect the objective lens from any dirt damage things like that so in the overhead view here i'm
going to quickly show you guys just opening up the iris closing the iris and the front of the
battery is the battery compartment that is where you would put your battery if you're going to run
those rechargeable cr123 style batteries on the back of the unit here we've got the power button
that power button functions in a couple different ways so if you press it you're going to be able to
power on the device when it comes time to power it off you actually have to tilt the unit down
and hold the button for a couple seconds then it's going to power down you can also press this
button one time you can get into different menus you can turn it to adjust the zoom or actually
navigate through the menus so realistically this is one of the most simple thermal monoculars
that we've ever purchased because of the fact that it has only one button to operate and it
is very user intuitive on the top you're going to see the mini rail and so this would attach to
different dovetail mounts different accessories if you are going to helmet mount this particular unit
as i wrap up this video i want to go over some pros and cons of this unit and discuss why i love
it so much starting out with the pros of this unit it's extremely lightweight and has a huge benefit
i truly believe that this is the first unit that actually makes sense for helmet mounted use
most other units like the ml19 or the flear breech didn't have the core resolution that this
one has and they didn't have the functionality that i believe that ira included in the mh25
the fact that it has a 1.1 base magnification that can actually be backed up to 1x magnification
means you can use it on your helmet and navigate naturally
you can run two of these together if you wanted to just like a set of binocular night vision
goggles you'll be able to navigate and have better depth perception than you would with
running another typical handheld thermal now thermal in general really kind of distorts your
depth perception it's often hard to range different objects items or pests
that you're going after so it does take a lot of training does take a lot of time behind the unit
to figure all of that out it also features four different color palettes and has a digital zoom
up to 8x we're looking at the cons the biggest con that i already discussed is the battery life
it has a horrible battery life when we are running the standard rechargeable batteries it is almost
unusable when it comes to that fact and because of that whenever we're using these for real out
in the field we're running those external battery packs another con with this particular unit is the
fact that it does not have any internal recording so you can't take photos with the unit you can't
record videos and for many people that's not going to matter but if you want to record
your kill shots on your hunt or record yourself for any photos things like that during the hunt
this is not the unit that is best for that i will add you can plug in a mini dvr if you want to
export video footage onto that from this device you are able to do that but now you have to lug
extra stuff with you into the field whereas if you look at something like the flear breach
that does have internal photo and video recording i still think that this is the better option and
although it has some of those downsides it has a lot of pros as well the last thing i'm going
to label as a con with this particular unit is the fact that the objective on this side
of the unit is very small so i'm just going to pop off the little plastic eyepiece here
it is a very very tiny unit so when we're looking at it and we're reading menus and we're making
changes or adjustments it is very small the text is big enough that you can see it and read it and
i don't have any problems with it but i could see that if your eyesight isn't the best this
unit may be kind of difficult to navigate some of those menus because the text is pretty small and
i did notice when you put it in helmet mode the text gets even smaller so it's even harder to see
what you're trying to read or what you're trying to change in the settings that's one other thing
to keep in mind one thing i'll note about that is you can run the pbs14 eyepiece adapter which
we highly recommend and we're going to go over the installation of that in a separate video
but that's one way that you can fix that eye box relief a little bit and get a more refined
image on that particular screen when you take the eyepiece off you'll notice that little screen is
extremely small and that's why the text and all that stuff appears so small so overall guys this
has become my favorite helmet mounted unit at this time because of the fact that it is packed with
features it has the 640 by 480 core really fast refresh rate it's very rugged very lightweight
and packed with a ton of features so this sounds like something that is the right unit for you you
can definitely check them out on our website the link is down in the description you're going to
find all the up-to-date specifications all the accessories that are coming with this particular
unit as well as our current lead time for this unit it's one of my favorite units i trust it
i've used it a lot over the last couple months and i think it's going to do a lot of you really well
if it's within your budget it's going to offer you that edge when we're out in the woods out in
the wilderness hunting prey or even just evading and navigating in the darkness if this video was
helpful to you and it helped you with making your purchase decision please let us know down in the
description and leave us a comment leave us a like if you're on youtube subscribe please share this
video let people know that we are in optics we're getting into this stuff you can find a whole line
of optics if you're on our website go into shop check out all the night vision and daytime optics
as well as all the accessories that we have there appreciate you guys and we'll see in the next one
you