Earlier this year Leupold released a new reticle for their Mark5 HD scopes. The new PR2 reticle was developed in collaboration with professional shooters and was designed for speed and precision. It is a reticle that is perfect for Precision Rifle Series shooters. Leupold sent their Mark5 HD 5-25×56 with their new PR2 reticle in for review.

PR2 Reticle For Speed And Precision

The Leupold Mark5 HD scope is a new world of quality optics for me. I have been using budget entry-level and middle-tier scopes by Vortex for shooting long range out to 1,000 yards using my Ruger Precision Rifle in 6.5 Creedmoor. For those who have never looked through a Leupold Mark5, like me before this review, I can tell you it is worth the price of admission. The image that the Mark5 HD produces is clean and clear all the way even at full magnification.

See the photo above? That is looking at a target 1,000 yards away. Below I zoomed in a bit with my phone to show you what I see.

Notice how clean the reticle is? Now compare that to another Mark5 HD. Thanks to my friend Jerry, I got to compare another Leupold Mark5 HD 5-25×56 but his scope has the Tremor 3 reticle. This time we are looking out at a target 1 mile away.

The Termor 3 reticle is very busy and only the center of the crosshairs is open. So you can compare similar distances, here is the same target but this time looking through the Mark5 HD PR2 reticle.

Did you notice the difference? Every intersection of lines is open in the PR2 reticle.

According to Leupold, the PR2 Reticle is based on their CCH reticle. Only they opened it up more so competition shooters can more easily spot trace and impacts. The CCH reticle was designed for military shooters and is somewhat similar to the Tremor reticle.

Take a look at the photo below. You can see how similar the CCH reticle is to the PR2 reticle. Only they reduced the odd number lines to open up the reticle for easier spotting. Leupold also staggers their tick marks. Look at the horizontal crosshair. The tick marks are only half tick marks. Further clearing up the reticle.

Using The Mark5 HD

The turrets on the Mark5 HD are phenomenal. Not only can you set the zero but it also stops 0.5 mils from zero but when you go to Zero it locks. So it is easy to dial back down to your 100-yard zero quickly and efficiently. There is a large button your need to press to unlock the turret but it is easy to hit and you almost don’t even notice it but when you want to go to absolute zero it has positive engagement that you know it is set without looking.

You will notice there are three rows of numbers. This allows you to easily dial up and quickly know how many mills you have dialed up instead of counting in your head how many revolutions you have dialed up. The Mark5 HD 5-25×56 PR2 MIL has 30 mils of elevation adjustment.

The windage knob is capped. But unscrew the cap and you have 17 mils of windage adjustment. Both the elevation and windage turrets move 0.1 mils per click. It was a little odd getting used to the line indicator for the windage adjustment. I am used to the line being at the center but instead, the Mark5 HD has it higher up. This makes it easier to see without having to move your head too much.

There is one aspect to the PR2 MIL reticle that I found odd. Since the scope is first focal plane, the reticle is extremely fine at lower magnification.

The PR2 reticle tree goes all the way to 44 mils. However, I found the numbers and hash marks to be too small to be able to read them. If I increase magnification to around 14x then the 10 mils line is at the bottom of the scope. At full 25x, I can only see the 6 mils holdover line.

Here is the Mark5 HD PR2 reticle at full 25x magnification looking at just 300 yards.

I was curious how well the PR2 reticle could work with night vision. I put my PVS-27 in front of it and looked out at 530 yards and 900 yards.

The image the Leupold Mark5 HD produces is a lot cleaner than this. I had a hard time focusing my iPhone to capture these images.

Final Thoughts On The PR2 Reticle Mark5 HD

Having compared my friend Jerry’s Tremor 3 reticle in the exact same scope, a Mark5 HD 5-25×56 I was able to truly appreciate the PR2 reticle. While I am not a PRS competitive shooter, I do find the PR2 reticle to be perfect for my needs. It is wide open and easy to spot my impacts. The Tremor 3 reticle is just too busy for my liking and seems like it hides a lot of what I am seeing. At a retail price of $1999.99, the Mark5 HD 5-25×56 PR2 is not the cheapest scope but the quality matches the price point. If you want a great piece of glass that you can see and reach out long range, then you should consider the Leupold Mark5 5-25×56 with PR2 reticle.  For more information go to their website.

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