You’ve seen me doing a lot of night vision related posts lately, mostly because that’s a shooting trend I’ve been deeply investing in. I still shoot competition as much as I can, but getting out to night vision shoots is a big priority for me now, too.

In my personal opinion, if you’re shooting with night vision, you need an “active” option for aiming. Passive is great, and I practice it often, but if you need to shoot on a cloudy night with no ambient IR to fall back on, you’re going to need to generate your own IR to see what you’re aiming at.

One budget option that has recently come to market is the SMSLaser XK68-IR. This is a ~$160 MFAL that provides visible laser, IR laser, and IR illuminator capabilities. I mounted it up on my AR-9 (running Maxim Defense Roller-Delayed Buffer) to see how it would work out.

Mandatory disclosure of conflicts and bias: I paid full-price and received no considerations from the manufacturer. This was my purchase alone.

The initial presentation is nice. Hard case that’s packed well and protects the items as expected.

The device itself has an acceptable form factor, and is made of some sort of metal. There is a rear switch port (proprietary), a top-mounted mode selector lever, and a side on/off button.

The XK68-IR mounts high. In fact, if you’re mounting it to the top of your rail, you will need to make sure your optic is running at 2.26″ height, or the XK68 will take up a rather significant portion of the view. Ordinarily, this wouldn’t be a big deal – shoot both eyes open! – but for people running PVS-14s, it could be a real issue, and even with bino NV, your field of vision is still fairly constrained. I would up using a Unity riser to get my UH1 Gen2 high enough to clear the XK68.

The controls suck. There is really no other way to put it. The XK68 has modes for such oddities as IR and green lasers together and an SOS mode that blinks the illuminator (for rapid onset epilepsy generation), but has no off mode. That means that it can ALWAYS turn on unless you pop out the battery (18650 – which I like). Keep that in the back of your mind. The selector lever itself is nothing to write home about, but works. Position clicks are a little mushier than I’d prefer, especially for use in the dark.

The on/off switch on the side is literally just on/off. It’s not a momentary fire button. It is placed such that it’s not really all that convenient outside of testing and zeroing use. One might theorize that these are the kind of controls you get when people who aren’t allowed to own guns design gun accessories.

The (included) remote switch is a sort-of bright spot for the XK68. It feels a bit flimsy, but it does work, and it has both momentary and constant buttons. It’s a shame that it connects through a proprietary port, but as it goes, it’s not bad. That’s good, because it’s basically the only usable control interface for triggering the XK68 in on-gun use.

The big problem with the XK68-IR’s controls is that they are fundamentally unsafe. There’s no off mode. There’s no cover for the lasers (or illuminator). The on/off button is stupidly easy to hit. There’s not even one of those little LEDs to tell you that the unit is on at all. I store mine with green selected because you could literally damage your eyes otherwise. The manufacturer did a quick and dirty conversion to IR, I get it, but you can’t leave this stuff out.

Well, all of that is fairly depressing, so let’s talk about function.

The IR and green lasers are not co-aligned. You will be zeroing them independently. Depending on your viewpoint, this is either a bug or a feature. Cheaper units have been known to not do such a hot job of aligning lasers, so it may be for the best that the XK68 just leaves it in your hands. It’d be a little less onerous if they used coin-turn adjustments rather than tiny hex wrenches – manipulating a tiny hex wrench in the dark is pretty much the worst.

Power-wise, the lasers look like they’re at the top of the civilian power bracket, and may even exceed it somewhat. They are not the retina burners that the Somogear lasers (on high) are, but they are also no joke power-wise. The IR laser has some bloom at closer ranges, and, frankly, is probably a little over-powered for the sort of application that the illuminator is suited for. I had difficulty getting a good zero because it totally overpowered the reticle – and without a co-aligned vis laser, I had no fall-back options.

The illuminator is LED-based, and could best be described as “extremely bright, with extreme flood”. Take a look at these pictures I took with a Sionyx:

That’s the 200yd range. It lit up the whole thing from 200yds. The hot spot is ginormous on the backstop. It’s really rather impressive performance from a pure power perspective. For comparison, a legitimate Surefire KM2C “Vampire” head ran out of steam around 100-150yds, with less flood.

The problem is that pure power is really not the way to make a great illuminator. If you’re using the illuminator to light up a big space from far away, yeah, the XK68 awesome. If you’re leaning into a port trying to hit a target at 25-50yds and there’s barrels and walls all around you, you just get blinded from the flood bouncing off everything. I personally experienced this, and it wasn’t much fun. The total lack of focus in the illuminator really hurt it. Even a simple shroud might have alleviated this problem to some degree.

In terms of holding zero… it seemed alright? I’m not sure it was perfect (I don’t shoot groups at night), but it didn’t wander very far if it did move. It is sometimes difficult to differentiate rail from MFAL issues with zero movement, and I readily admit the handguard on this gun is not exactly top-tier. Recoil on the rifle is not too harsh due to the roller-delayed buffer, so I wouldn’t read too far into the zero situation either way.

I guess you have to take all of this in context. The XK68-IR is pretty cheap as MFALs go, and I’ve got to admit, it has power to spare. But, as noted, this thing has a lot of problems to go along with it, and I seriously question its ability to be used as an IR illuminator in many common practical shooting use cases. At the same rough price range, you might be better off with the Votatu M4L-IR from Amazon and then procuring a Vampire-style clone IR/white light from eBay. And if you can stretch it to $260, the Somogear PEQ-15 clone is miles better in my experience.

Still, credit where credit is due, I like how SMSLaser took a stab at giving people what they want in this space. This product clearly needs a lot more refinement, but the structure is there for something that might actually be pretty good in the future.