Compound Bow Reviews

The Bottom Line:The BowTech BlackKnight is the bow that built a company: BowTech's first product, the one it wheeled up to a chronograph in 2000 to announce itself, and the origin of the "fastest bows in the world" reputation that still follows the brand. Priced at $749 in its 2005 form, it delivered a 342-350 fps IBO... read full review

The Bottom Line:The BowTech Liberty VFT is a mid-2000s hunter that has aged into a genuinely appealing used and backup rig: a long 33-1/4-inch chassis, a quiet VFT limb shot, a smooth FreedomCam draw, let-off adjustable from 65 to 80 percent, and a target-color option that lets one bow hunt and shoot 3D, all sold for... read full review

The Bottom Line:The BowTech Rascal is the rare mid-2000s BowTech that was never about speed - it is a featherweight, grow-with-me youth bow built to fit a child and keep fitting them, sold from 2002 through 2005 at a $279-to-$289 MSRP. Its strengths are the ones that matter for a first bow: about 2.2 pounds so a small... read full review

The Bottom Line:The Bowtech Extreme is worth understanding on its own terms: a single-cam hunting bow, fast for its generation at 325-333 fps IBO, whose VFT name points to a limb technology for a smoother shot rather than to any cam or let-off spec. Across its life - the 2001-2002 Extreme Solo, the short-draw variant,... read full review

The Bottom Line:The Browning Rage is proof that a budget bow can earn a long life: across 2003 to 2009 it covered a lot of ground, first as a long, forgiving HyperMax 10 twin-cam at its 2007 price of $279.99 for the bare bow and later as a faster 300-plus fps single-cam, all while staying firmly in the value tier. It... read full review

The Bottom Line:The Browning Lady Impulse matters more for what it set out to do than for any number on its spec sheet. Launched in 2000 at a $260 MSRP and refined in 2001, it was Browning's purpose-built women's compound - a 2.5-pound, 32-to-33-inch Micro-Class bow with a 25-to-27-inch draw, a women's-sized laminated-wood... read full review

The Bottom Line:The Browning Mirage is best understood not as one bow but as a decade-long series of them, built while PSE held the Browning license and aimed squarely at the value-to-mid tier rather than the flagship shelf. It began in 2001 as a forgiving 33-inch single-cam hunter, grew a premium SX and a target ZX,... read full review

The Bottom Line:The Browning Illusion is a reminder that a badge is not the whole story: underneath the Browning name is a PSE-built single-cam hunting bow that, at its 2005 launch MSRP of $649.99, delivered a forgiving 7.25-inch brace height, a smooth Trance cam, a machined 6061-T6 riser, and a quiet, low-recoil shot... read full review

The Bottom Line:The Browning Micro Adrenaline is a rare thing in youth archery: a bow a brand believed in enough to keep redesigning for a full decade. From the light 2.5-pound original on Hyper-Maximizer cams in 2000, through the 2.6-pound HyperMax 10 XS of 2003-2006, to the final 31-inch, 7-1/8-inch-brace HX form... read full review

The Bottom Line:The original Browning Micro Midas is the first-generation, pre-PSE youth compound that pioneered the grow-with-me idea a decade before it became standard - a die-cast magnesium riser, solid-fiberglass Youth XP limbs, and a Micro Maximizer cam that adjusts draw length without a press, all wrapped around... read full review

The Bottom Line:The Browning Micro Midas 2 is a reminder that the grow-with-me youth bow is an old, well-solved idea: at its 2001-02 launch price of $195 for the bow and $255 for the full combo, it gave a parent a light 2.5-pound machined-aluminum frame, a MicroMax two-cam with a genuine 6 inches of draw-length growth,... read full review

The Bottom Line:At launch in 2019 the Summit ran $799 for the camo-riser-with-black-limbs build and $824.99 for a fully matched camo riser and limbs - value-tier money for a made-to-order American bow when the flagships it was shown against sat past a thousand dollars. What you were paying for was not headline speed... read full review