Ready for this? It’s a mouthful. The Atibal Optics Vantage WMLRF 2000 Ballistic Rail-Mounted Laser Rangefinder is here! Priced well below the competition, the WMLRF 2000 still boasts an impressive 2,000-meter ranging capability, instant ballistics solutions, a great color screen, a remote control, and more. Range your target, view your elevation and windage holds for current conditions from behind the gun, dial or hold appropriately, and send it.
Along with the WMLRF, Atibal also loaned us a Stealth Gen II HD 5-30×56 FFP scope (MSRP $650), rings, and a diving board on which to mount the rangefinder. I put the entire shebang onto a 10-inch 308 Winchester Pork Sword SBR from Black Collar Arms.
Admittedly this is, at least visually, a lot of optic for such a small rifle! The truth is it’s like a 1/3-MOA (five shots, not three) gun through which 185 grain Berger Juggernauts don’t first go subsonic until about 930 yards, so it’s pretty freakin’ capable setup that’s perfectly able to take advantage of what the Vantage WMLRF has to offer.
I used the provided “diving board,” but it should be noted that the weapon mounted rangefinder could be mounted elsewhere on the firearm, too. The left side of the handguard is sometimes used for a WMLRF for right-handed shooters, for example. That said, the Atibal’s digital display and internal gyroscopes (measuring left/right cant and up/down tilt) cannot be corrected if the unit is mounted on its side, so you’ll want to keep it top up.
By far the most difficult part of using a weapon mounted rangefinder is getting it zeroed so it’s perfectly parallel with your scope’s zero. Atibal tries to make this as easy as possible by including a zeroing target, reflective decals, and a visible red laser that can be turned on in the Vantage 2000 that’s parallel from the factory with the actual ranging laser (which isn’t visible to the human eye).
Sighting in / zeroing the WMLRF looks like this:
- zero your optic. I zeroed at 100 yards as usual.
- use a sight-in target with a known-unit grid, put your gun on a steady rest, and position the gun so the scope’s crosshair is on the bullseye
- turn the elevation and windage dials on the WMLRF until the red laser is offset from the scope’s reticle exactly as they’re offset when mounted on the gun. In the case of the Atibal rings with diving board that I used, this meant that the red dot needed to be right on the centerline left/right and 2.5 inches above the bullseye, since the business end of the WMLRF is 2.5 inches above the centerline of the scope.
This doesn’t need to be done at 100 yards or at whatever distance you’ve zeroed your scope! The whole idea here is that the laser is parallel with the scope, so whether the target is 15 yards away or 2,000 yards away that laser should still be hitting 2.5 inches above the scope’s reticle (or whatever the offset is on your setup).
Needless to say, it’s hard to see a little red laser dot at 100 yards in daylight. If you can swing it, this whole process is made easier in a lower-light situation. I did it at like 11:30 AM on a clear Texas summer day, so about as far from low light as it gets, and I struggled to see the red dot even on white paper at 25 yards. Had I remembered to bring the reflective decals that Atibal includes with the rangefinder my life would have been easier.
That said, my one suggestion to Atibal after using the WMLRF for about six weeks was to ditch the red laser for a green one. It would cost a few bucks more but it would improve the user experience significantly. A green laser is just so incredibly much stronger and more visible. This isn’t exactly a knock on the product, as I’m fairly sure all of the other, more expensive weapon mounted rangefinders on the market also use a red sight-in laser, but it’s something that could help further differentiate the Atibal unite and deliver a less frustrating sight-in experience at what I’m guessing is a cost of a few dollars.
Naturally, I went straight from the 25-yard range to the 500-yard range. I plunked down, put the reticle on a 500-yard gong, clicked the “range” button on the WMLRF, and saw 503 yards (accurate, BTW, according to the range manager) and a 6.3-MIL elevation hold. I held on the 6.25-MIL line in the reticle, squeezed the trigger, and hit. The zeroing of rangefinder to scope went well and the ballistic profile was dead-on, too!
Speaking of ballistics, this is most easily done through the phone app. Multiple ballistic profiles can be created in the app and then sent, stored, and switched between on the rangefinder. I inputted the velocity and ballistic coefficient of my ammo and shipped it off to the WMLRF titled “308win1.”
With its Bluetooth link, external devices such as wind meters can be connected to the Atibal WMLRF for input in the real-time calculations. Built into the unit itself are sensors for angle (cant and tilt) and atmospherics (temperature, barometric pressure, humidity), which are used along with the active ballistic profile to present a firing solution to the shooter.
All of this is displayed on an easy-to-read, color display that worked much better in the Texas sun than I expected.
And there’s the key for what you’re looking at.
At the click of a button the Vantage WMLRF switches to a different screen, which I think is pretty DOPE (see what I did there?). Had I bothered to intput the correct reticle information into my ballistic profile I believe it would have put the red dot in the correct place, but the whole concept of this screen is to duplicate your scope reticle, display the necessary info, and also put that red dot at your correct elevation and windage hold, allowing you to simply copy the visual location in your scope picture and drill the target.
While the top of the unit has rubberized buttons with nice, positive clicks behind ’em for ranging, turning on and off the visible laser, and moving through the menus, reaching for the rangefinder isn’t even necessary.
A compact remote control is included with the WMLRF and it’s capable of operating all of the available functions. I chose to strap it to the butt stock right where I place my support hand. It was simple to operate while shooting.
Which is, of course, the point of weapon mounting a rangefinder. It allows ranging without removing oneself from the rifle. I was able to range my target, view the firing solution, and view the digital level to know if I was accidentally canting my rifle to one side or the other all without removing my cheek from the cheek rest.
It’s all very tactical and it sure looks the part, but it’s also legitimately functional. Yes, for a smaller hit to your wallet you can run a handheld rangefinder; even one that displays or exports your firing solution. And, yes, a weapon mounted rangefinder is “married” to the scope on which it’s mounted and is aligned to the scope’s zero.
For your go-to rifle, though — the one you’d take to Africa and always choose for a big hunt or would grab in a “tactical scenario” — this may just fit the bill. If you’ve moved to dedicated suppressors for specific guns and no longer attempt to move scopes from gun-to-gun, you’re probably in the category of shooter who would dedicate a rangefinder to a specific weapon so it can be run seamlessly from behind the gun.
I found the Atibal Vantage WMLRF 2000 to be a powerful tool, integrating important real-time information like rifle cant with accurate ballistic solutions that account for atmospherics, rifle position, wind (optional) and, of course, range, and displaying all of that on a clear, easy-to-read screen. Once sighted in it was extremely easy to use and proved itself dead-on accurate.
Check out the YouTube video embedded at top (or click HERE) to see the WMLRF in action!
Specifications: Atibal Optics Vantage WMLRF 2000 Ballistic Rail-Mounted Laser Rangefinder