Review of Acetech AC6000 Chrono (NO) and Comparison to Caldwell G2 (YES)

[dlee]

My first review but I wanted to get this information out to everyone before you spend your money on one of these paintball-style chronographs. This one is the Acetech AC6000 which I purchased off aliexpress for $57 and free shipping. As you can tell from the title, I soon purchased a Caldwell G2 (which I have found to be fantastically reliable).

The comparison test happened as follows: Filled Urban to 3300psi, took 57 shots and ended with 1000 psi. Shot 15.89gr Predator Polymag Shorts. Set up the AC6000 3" in front of the muzzle and the G2 4" behind the AC6000. Shot through both chronographs. Recorded data.

1st picture is of the front of the AC6000 and the box it came in when it is turned on. Nice OLED display, actually. 4 AAA batteries power it, or a micro-USB connector. No bluetooth, but you can store up to 5 different pellets in it (you enter caliber in mm and weight in grams). It calculates fps, fpe, rep rate in English or metric units. Sounds like a great deal for $57 right? That's why I bought one.

2nd picture is of the actual test setup. Looking out my basement walkout (it's how I shoot in the winter). You see the muzzle of the Urban, the AC6000, the G2, and under the G2 my focusable LED flashlight illuminating some targets down range. The side-by-side pair of 8" targets you can just barely see are 37.5 yds out just to give you a feel for the arrangement.

3rd picture is a graph of the shot string as recorded by both chronies. G2 in blue and AC6000 in orange. Pretty self-explanatory - the AC6000 had far more scatter and read slower speeds every time. It was in front of the G2 so if anything one would think it would read higher speeds. Nope.

4th picture is for the data geeks here. This is a linear regression of the first 40 shots (the up-slope of the power curve). Really the important points here are the r^2 values in the lower right, which are a measure of how noisy the data is relative to a best fit straight line, and the size of the error bars, which I've plotted as something called standard error of regression. fancy words that aren't important - basically, bigger error bars means less reliable results.

Takeaway lesson here? Don't buy the Acetech AC6000.

Save your money and buy a real chronograph - several are mentioned in this forum. I happen to really like this Caldwell G2 - I only get errors when the sun is basically shining right through it late in the afternoon (and usually even then I don't get them). Turning the thing upside down and sining the light upward was smart. Hope this is helpful to people looking around and tempted to buy a paintball-style chrony to save some money. I got one I'll sell you cheap! ;-)

[mpbby]

"Hope this is helpful to people looking around and tempted to buy a paintball-style chrony to save some money."

Exactly my case..

Congratulations for the nice work, and thank you for sharing!