i discovered the streamlight tlr vir-2 sometime last year and after getting it
and getting my hands on it and running it for a couple months this little light has quickly
become one of my favorite options for people looking to get into night vision and they need
a light that is going to work for them without spending fifteen hundred dollars we now have these
on our website and i want to take a second today to talk about the features of the tlr virtual
getting into night vision can be daunting you're going to realize the moment that you purchase your
first pbs 14 or maybe your first set of binos there's a lot of other supplementary gear that
goes along with that night vision unit it doesn't just stop at putting a unit on your head and while
the reality is you could do that you can grab a pbs14 strap it on your helmet maybe the proper red
dot that has night vision settings you can shoot passively and it's actually very effective so
this video is not to try to pressure you guys into purchasing an infrared laser or illuminator what i
wanted to do is show you guys the difference between say a dedicated laser aiming device
like the dball a3 kind of compare a high-end laser like this to some other budget options that exist
on the market and then talk a little bit about why i would say to most people if you're getting
into night vision you're just getting started and you're on a tighter budget getting something like
the tlr vir2 is probably not a bad idea one thing i want to note at the beginning of this video
specifications pricing availability all that stuff is subject to change based on the manufacturers so
when you're watching this video if you want to see all of the specifications and our current
pricing in stock levels we're going to put a link in the description below click that link head over
to our website and then all of the up-to-date specifications and all that good stuff are going
to be over there so this video isn't discussing pricing and we're not going super in-depth with
this light we do have a couple cameras set up we've got our infrared camera set up over here
so i am going to actually show you guys in studio here how this compares to some other
available models starting off right away the tlr vir2 is obviously very budget friendly
when you're looking into lasers and you want to go either a dedicated laser like the d-ball a3
or you're looking for something a little bit less money there's not many options out there
but the good thing is streamlight did deliver with this particular light so there's a couple
functions with this light that i really like on the top of the body you can switch between
off which is kind of like a safety setting so no matter how you bump the switches it'll never fire
you can go to visible light and this thing does put out about 300 lumens i'll show you back there
so that's white light coming out of this light it's nothing to write home about this isn't a
thousand lumen light with 20 30 40 000 candela but it does have enough output that it is very
functional if you need a white light and then when you flip the switch over to the right
there's an ir setting and when we go into this ir setting what happens is you have an infrared
laser and an infrared illuminator now the one thing that i'll say when you go to a dedicated
laser like the d-ball a3 you've got a bunch of different settings that you can flip between now
the d-ball a3 doesn't have a visible light and many of the dedicated lasers like a d-ball a3
are not going to have visible illumination so you would need to run another white light
for situations where you're not running night vision but the one thing that the dball does
really well it has a bunch of different settings where you can switch between the visible laser
only you can switch between infrared laser only on low mode infrared laser on high mode illuminator
high mode illuminator low mode and then illuminator and infrared in multiple different
variations so that's one of the main benefits of running a big dedicated laser like a d ball a3
d2 on the aplc's the mauls things like that the reality is it's out of budget for most people
the downside of the tlr vir2 in that respect is you can't change between illuminator and laser
when you switch it over to the infrared mode it's going to fire both all the time people are going
to ask about the laser and it is not a full power laser it is a neutered laser but if you check out
our youtube channel we talk about that a lot we've got content out there i don't necessarily care
about having a full power laser i don't think that that necessarily should be your top priority when
we look at the body as well you're going to notice that there are some adjusters and that is to zero
your laser now that's a really awesome function you can get this thing dialed in really well
the downside of that is this doesn't have any clickers on the adjusters what i'm saying there
with that is the fact that when you're turning those adjusters they're just kind of like a
screw under tension and what i mean by that is you can adjust it but you're not going to get a
positive click every time you adjust it so that's kind of a downside in my mind and i questioned at
first whether or not this thing would hold zero because of that but i will say that there are some
guards over the screws you're not just going to bump them out of place and haven't had any
issues holding zero with this particular light when we look at the back it's very similar to
other stream lights where you have a momentary switch where you can push it the other direction
and it has a constant on function so overall guys it's a very compact light with very easy
easy use it's very simple to operate when we look at the other cons that are associated with this
particular light one of the things that i really don't like about it is the fact that when it comes
time to change the batteries you actually have to take off the infrared laser whereas when we're
looking at the d-ball a3 there's a little cubby on the front a little compartment where you would
just unscrew the cap and you could replace the cr123 battery without affecting your zero so that
is something to consider i don't think that it's a deal breaker because you get a ton of run time
and i'm using these not for the white light but for the infrared laser eliminator so i get a lot
of miles out of one battery because i'm not using it all the time but that is something to keep in
mind if you have the switch stuck in infrared mode or even visible light and you accidentally bump it
and it's turned on you're going to come back the next time you want to use it to a dead battery so
when i'm storing it or even when i'm carrying my 10.3 around with me i keep it in the off setting
just so i don't bump it because i don't want to be taking this thing off a lot and having to
readjust my zero or anything like that i'm going to actually show you guys real quick
how you would change that battery you would simply pop the cover off the back
lift up that compartment and then the cr123 is going to come out just like that so it's
super easy it's not difficult to change the battery but again you
cannot change the battery with this mounted on your unit no doubt because there's a laser in
the front and if you were just unscrewing the head and trying to screw it back on to change battery
i know that would affect your zero so that's probably why this is designed in this way the last
little light that i have up here that i'm going to go over real quickly is the surefire x300v
and i wanted to show you this particular light because it is a little bit different than the tlr
vir2 they're in a similar price bracket they're both very much less money than the d ball a3
but the x300v does not have a laser at all this is just a white light but also you can turn the head
and turn it to an infrared illuminator so first let's show you the white light up on the wall
so obviously it has a white light as far as functions it's very similar to the tlr
vir2 i'll probably do some more content on this particular light in the future i like this light
if you're looking at a dedicated sidearm light where most of the time when i'm shooting a sidearm
i don't necessarily care to have a laser so the tlr-vr2 i'm focusing this on a carbine entry level
light that once i can save up and get something like a d-ball a3 i'm going to put the tlr vrr2
onto a pistol and then use that as a pistol light if you already have your other boxes checked off
the x300b might be a good option for you and i find that this is a very easy light to use when
i'm shooting a sidearm with a red dot because i can passively aim through the red dot and i can
illuminate targets just like i would with a white light during the daytime so the last little bit
of information that i think is valuable to you guys i'm going to actually show you the infrared
on the wall behind me and we have an infrared or full spectrum converted camera keep in mind that
this isn't going to be a perfect example because we have studio lights on and stuff like that
so when you're watching that footage it's probably not going to look as bright as it actually is when
you're in the darkness but what i want to show you is the beam pattern and also that laser on the tlr
vir 2. so the first thing i'm going to do is just kind of turn out of the way here and shine the tlr
tlr vir2 up on the wall we'll turn that on to constant so you can see that there's
going to be a little laser in the center of that circle you'll see the illuminator
the illuminator is not as potent and not as focused or i should say as defined as you
would see when we switch to the white light the white light has a nice hot spot in the middle
and then some good flood it's pretty defined this is typical anytime you're running a illuminator
that is sort of a dedicated white light that then is used to be an illuminator ultimately
if you want to have a really good illuminator it's going to be a dedicated illuminator not
trying to do both at the same time but for me if you're looking at 50 yards and in that illuminator
laser combination is really solid especially considering the price point now we'll flip this
x300v over you're going to see that that has a much more potent infrared illumination setting
when we look at the white light versus the infrared illuminator they're very consistent so
surefire did a really good job of taking a light that's a white light and also making it functional
as an infrared illuminator so now the last thing that i want to do is put these two together
side by side just so you guys can see so you're going to notice right away that the surefire has a
much better illuminator but the tlr vir2 has the laser so if you want a laser and an
illuminator the tlr vir2 is a solid option now the last thing that i wanted to show you guys
was the dball a3 and i'm kind of throwing a curveball here because i wasn't originally
going to do this but you can probably see up on the wall the illuminator and the laser
so again this is a curveball wasn't going to show this but what you'll notice about the d-ball
a3 is that illuminator is probably a much more defined illumination it should be very much
a very tight pattern and you can actually adjust that on the d ball a3 so if i turn it like that
you'll see that that looks a little different i just adjusted the illuminator so it should change
it a little bit when you get into dedicated lasers like a d ball a3 and maul or any of the
other variants of dedicated lasers they are going to be a bit more refined i think is a good word
for that but ultimately i don't think you should shy away from getting a tlr vir2 because you're
not investing a ton of money but what you're getting is the ability to use an illuminator with
night vision and you have a laser aiming device that's going to get you along for quite some time
before you should feel the need to necessarily drop 1500 bucks or more
on a dedicated laser aiming device and if you don't have a carbine or you already have a
dedicated laser aiming device on your carbine and you want a light for a pistol the x300v is another
good option just know that this does not have the infrared laser built into it so guys i hope
that that covered a lot of information on the tlr vir2 if you want to find more information
about that just remember you can find that on our website there's a link in the description below
head on over there check out our inventory we've got tons of other night vision gear daytime gear
other optics and things like that as well as our steel target systems so definitely take a minute
to swing over there we purchase something off our site it supports us it lets us reinvest in you by
creating educational content that you ultimately get to consume for zero dollars which is a pretty
awesome value exchange the only thing that i would ask for you is that you hit the like button
leave us a comment down below let us know what you think no matter what you think about this video
please leave a comment and then subscribe and the last thing that i'm going to ask you guys to do
share this video with some friends and family that you think
would find this useful we appreciate you guys we will catch you in the next video hey