Two instruments that measure different things. Which hours of your training each one belongs in — and why the honest answer is usually both.
There are a number of training devices available to competitive target shooters: SCATT, Noptel, Rika, Trace10, MantisX, HoldMaster. They divide into two families. Optical trainers watch the real target through a sensor on the barrel and know exactly where the shot would have gone. Motion trainers watch the gun itself and know exactly how it moved. HOLDG is the second kind, built to the precision the first kind set.
HOLDG is not designed to replace SCATT, Noptel or Rika. An optical system measures against the actual target and therefore has a true, drift-free origin. It scores honestly over a full match. HOLDG cannot, and the HOLDG document says so in as many words rather than hiding it.
What HOLDG gives you is every other training hour. No target, no distance, no lighting, no mount-and-align — plus a recoil measurement set that a target-facing camera cannot produce at all, because it cannot see what the muzzle did in the 250 ms after the shot.
The one difference everything follows from
An optical trainer's sensor sees the target. That gives it an origin that is true and does not move: shot sixty is measured against the same reference as shot one, so the group on the face is real, the zero is real, and an elevation-versus-windage bias across a match is real.
HOLDG's sensor sees nothing. It measures the angle the bore is pointing, integrating a gyro with no magnetometer to correct it, so left–right aim drifts 30–60 mm per minute at 10 m. Everything measured over a short window — hold shape, movement at the break, the recoil loop, recovery — is unaffected. Everything measured against a long-lived reference is not.
In exchange, the angle is the same angle in any room. There is no target to hang, no distance to set, no lighting to control and no region of interest to align. A 50 m event trains at full angular fidelity in a 10 m hall, and every discipline lands on one scale: 10 m-equivalent millimetres.
Side by side
checked 25 August 2026
HOLDG
SCATT Basic
SCATT WS1
SCATT MX-W2
Price
Not yet announced
€795
€1,460
€1,975
Measures against
The bore's own angle
The real target, optically
An electronic target, by infrared
The real target, optically
Needs a target
No
Yes — paper or a standard installation
Yes — an electronic target
Yes
Training distance
Any — results quoted as 10 m-equivalent
2.5–50 m
5–10 m to the target, simulated to 1000 m
2.5–1000 m
Connection
Bluetooth LE to phone, tablet or Mac
Wired USB to a computer
Wireless, infrared to the target
Wi-Fi 2.4 GHz or USB
Software platforms
Android, iOS, macOS
Windows, macOS, Linux
Windows
Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android
Sensor
416 Hz gyro + accelerometer, barrel clamp
Optical sensor, 29 g
Optical, 0.96 kg kit
Optical sensor, 56 g
Battery
Wake-on-motion; 26 Hz idle, deep sleep between strings
Powered over the USB cable
Up to 30 h continuous
≈4 h practice time
Setup per session
Clamp on, one-tap re-centre
Mount and align to the target
Mount and align to the target
Mount and align to the target
SCATT figures are the manufacturer’s own published specifications, linked at the foot of this page. HOLDG figures come from the HOLDG document.
What each kind of instrument can see
HOLDG
Optical trainer
A true, drift-free origin
No
Yes
An authoritative score over a full 60-shot string
No
Yes
Point of impact and zero
No
Yes
Works with no target in the room
Yes
No
The same numbers at any distance
Yes
No
The muzzle's own path after the break
Yes
No
The last row is the structural one. An optical system measures the aim point on the target; in the quarter-second after the sear releases, that is precisely the interval its sensor is being thrown off the thing it was watching. Peak excursion, bearing, rise time, loop width, recovery and settle point come from the gun, and only a sensor riding the gun can report them.
Which instrument for which question
Where HOLDG is the right instrumentmost training hours
Any room is a range. No target, no distance, no lighting, no mount-and-align. The ten minutes before bed count as training.
One scale across every discipline. Everything in 10 m-equivalent millimetres, so a 50 m three-position shooter and an air rifle shooter compare hold figures directly.
A 50 m event at full angular fidelity in a 10 m hall. The single largest practical benefit of an angular instrument through a winter.
Recoil, measured. Peak excursion, bearing, rise time, loop width, the muzzle's actual path, recovery time and settle point.
Trigger snatch isolated from the gun's impulse. The aim 8 ms before onset against 30 ms after, reported separately as at break and deliberately kept out of the recoil figure — because a 90 mm kick with 0.2 mm at the break and the same kick with 4 mm at the break need opposite work.
Sway against tremor. The two look identical on a trace and need opposite coaching. The spectrum settles it in four seconds.
Runs on hardware you already own, and works end-to-end against a built-in demo shooter before a module arrives.
Where an optical system is the right instrumentat the range
A scored match. A true origin over 60 shots, with the group where the group actually was.
Point of impact and zero. HOLDG has no opinion on where your rifle shoots.
Elevation versus windage bias across a string — anything measured against a long-lived reference.
Where the shot would have gone, rather than what the gun did. Sometimes that is the question, and then this is the instrument.
Using both
The pattern that works is to use each device for what it measures well. Keep the optical system for scored matches at the range, where the origin has to be true and the score has to be a score. Use HOLDG for everything else, which for most shooters is most of their training hours.
Daily · 15–20 minHOLDG Hold Trainer. Trace length, hold ellipse, sway/tremor split. No target, no ammunition, no setup.
3× a weekHOLDG free practice, dry. Recoil agreement above 85%, shot-moment jump near zero.
WeeklyHOLDG match series, dry, at match pace — does the hold survive shot fifty?
At the rangeThe optical system for a scored string; HOLDG fitted alongside for recoil and recovery, which a dry release cannot load the same way.
No, and it is not sold as one. An optical trainer measures against the real target, so it has a true origin and scores a match honestly. HOLDG measures the bore's angle, drifts in yaw, and treats scores as a within-string indication. It is a different instrument for different hours, not a cheaper version of the same one.
The sensor has no magnetometer, so left–right aim is pure gyro integration and bias instability alone moves the origin 30–60 mm per minute at 10 m. Over a 75-minute 60-shot match the origin can wander further than the scoring face. This is a physical limit of a magnetometer-free sensor, not a bug awaiting a fix — so the app states it rather than hiding it behind an automatic recentring leak, which would also erase genuine slow aim wander.
Recoil. Peak excursion, bearing, rise time, loop width, the muzzle's actual path either side of the break, recovery time and settle point — plus trigger snatch isolated from the gun's own impulse. A target-facing camera cannot see what the muzzle did in the 250 ms after the shot, because that is the interval in which it is being thrown off the target.
Yes. They mount independently and measure independently. The common pattern is an optical system for scored strings at the range and HOLDG for the recoil and recovery figures alongside it, then HOLDG alone for the dry training the rest of the week.
Correct. HOLDG reports angles as 10 m-equivalent millimetres, so a 50 m rifle shooter can train in a 10 m hall and a 25 m pistol shooter in a corridor with numbers directly comparable to the ones they produce on the range. There is no print scale, no region of interest, no marker to detect and no re-calibration when you move.
They are the same family as HOLDG — a sensor on the gun rather than one watching the target — and they share HOLDG's freedom from targets and distances. Compare them on what the motion pipeline actually produces: sample rate, whether trigger movement is separated from the gun's impulse, whether recoil recovery is timed, and whether the raw session can be replayed after the algorithms change.
Sources
SCATT figures are the manufacturer's own published specifications, checked on 25 August 2026 rather than recalled:
HOLDG figures come from the HOLDG codebase and firmware. Prices are the manufacturer's list price in EUR on the date shown; regional pricing, taxes and dealer pricing vary.
SCATT, Noptel, Rika, Trace10, MantisX and HoldMaster are trademarks of their respective owners. TraceGuidance is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by any of them. Specifications and prices are as published by each manufacturer on the date shown and may since have changed — check the source links before relying on them.
HOLDG is a training instrument for the shooting sports. It does not sell, promote or facilitate the purchase of firearms or ammunition.
