Going back to when I first started hand loading, I always wondered how close was a getting to the performance of Factory Ammunition, how consistent were my hand loads, so back in the early 1980s I bought my first Chronograph. It was a Ohler Model 33. It had a one lien LED display. It cost me a big chunk of my paycheck, but I was going to learn more about my ammunition.
It served be well for many years and then I came upon the CED Chronograph. This one had some memory in it and a serial cable to connect to my computer to dump data. It even spoke out the velocity for everyone to hear. I had a second set of infra red skyscreens for it that would work well at indoor ranges. It was a very cool package
I reviewed the Magneto Speed unit a few years ago. This one used no skyscreens, a magnetic sensor knew when the projectile flew over it. Unfortunately since it had to be attached to the barrel to get the sensor close enough to work, it was a poor choice for hand guns.
Then we come to the LabRader. This is a Dopler Balistic Radar unit. Thee is no setup required, just set the unit next to you on the shooting bench and you are ready to go. The unit has an SD card slot so it will write thousands of strings of shots to the card for computer transfer. It calculates everything on the display, it creates a file for each shot showing the velocity at each radar reflection, about every 13 microseconds. There is so much data that you can even calculate the ballistic coefficient of the projectiles.
As cool as it was when I got my first Chronograph, these was the next level. Faster setup and take down, works under any lighting condition, provides Much more data and easier to work with.
There was one thing that always caught my attention, the units settings include bluetooth.
Well with the most recent firmware release (about 2 months ago) we can now turn that on and do all the control and parameter settings from a smartphone App. LabRader just upped the game one more notch
With this App, they turned the tedious up arrow/down arrow movement for setup to something that is fast, easy and logical.
Plus now we can look at our data while we are eating lunch without having to keep a laptop on the table.
If you are considering an upgrade or replacement to your existing Chronograph you should give serious thought to acquiring a LabRadar.
Yes it cost more then the fold up ones, but this is a seldom in a lifetime investment. It is worthwhile