I have a Garmin Xero A1i that I purchased 2nd hand from a fellow AO'er.
I've run several different types of sights / peeps on my bows over the years.
Couldn't get used to horizontal pins as I felt they covered up too much of the overall sight picture. Got a single pin slider sight with a string peep, but never did feel comfortable with the setup in case the pin wasn't adjusted to the range needed on animals moving closer/farther to me.
Then ran a vertical multi-pin setup (Trophy Ridge) that was good. Ran it in combination with a Timberline No-peep and had good success with those. Got bored and purchased an IQ sight (back to horizontal pins, but had the No-peep technology built into the sight itself) and had good luck with that too.
Had the IQ until January 2023. Was recovering from a shoulder injury and decided that I was going to shoot more to see if I would either break the shoulder or heal it. And if I was going to shoot more, might as well change it up again and go back to a string peep and the new-to-me Garmin.
All I can say is wow. Not only does it eliminate the need for my handheld rangefinder (still carry it though), the Garmin has a very similar technology to the Timberline No-peep system built in while you're activating the ranging system. This technology (like the NP) will indicate if you're torquing the bow or are slightly off your anchor point (strings stretching). Plus, once you've got the Garmin dialed in to your maximum practice range (mine is set at 80 yards) you have an absolutely clean sight picture with a single aiming point at the distance you ranged. No horizontal pin arms, no vertical pin arms, no chance of the pin not being slid up or down to the correct yardage.
The only thing I could possibly argue with is the ranging abilities in heavy fog, but your handheld rangefinder won't work then either. On the flip side of that statement, your preset pins are a fast single click away to have those displayed.
I'm running on about 15 months of the same set of batteries and the battery indicator hasn't even moved. But will be changing them out prior to hunting season.
I like the idea of being able to range a moving animal with confidence that the single aiming point will be right.
All that being said, I have always liked my Garmin products. I have owned several Garmin GPS units as well as watches and currently have 5 GPS by Garmin (some are almost 30 years old) - none of them have ever let me down and I don't expect the Garmin Xero to deviate from that level of perfection that my other Garmin products have.
J.
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My $0.02.... Please feel free to take my comments with a grain of salt
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