What's the best sniper rifle?

The objectively correct answer is Vanquisher.. but the Inferno is way more fun.
If you can make every shot count.. Lanat is really good too.

You are looking for turbocharge with 6b magazine upgrade. With a widow X you get +100% power recharge. Its an uncommon so quite easily accessible for everyone. Shoot your gun, hit turbocharge,that gives you an instant gun refill and you have a double shot widow. It's my most common build to fight kett Gold. It also works with the Isharay, but only have that at level 5. You can go with the obvious (Vanquisher), but i just find it boring to use that gun all the time.

I tried out the Isharay the other day and quite like it. It's basically a harder hitting Widow but with a much cooler scoped in view (with very fluid, quick zoom in) and sounds really cool too (like a silenced laser or something?).

Of course there is also the Black Widow. While it is outclassed by the Vanquisher, I hear it is still a great sniper rifle.

That's all well and good until you're over run by dogs and Krogans. Also.. almost all sniper rifles have magazines, and don't require reloading after one shot. That's a stupid Mass Effect design. I could see if we had to cycle a bolt or something for 4-5 rounds, before a LONG reload.. but reloading after every shot? No gun designer in their right mind would ever do that to a soldier in the field.. and no military in their right mind would issue the weapon to their troops. Stupid design is stupid.

Vanquisher, Inferno, Black Widow are top tier IMO.

Lanat, Valient, and Raptor are serviceable but don't measure up to the other 3 from my experience.

I'm not doing that to my cooldowns.

Absolutely agree 100%.

Carrying two guns increases the cooldown speed of your powers.  Sniper rifle with an ultralight materials mod might mean no impact on cooldown whatsoever but if you start adding a shotgun . . .

Dont bring two weapons. The vanquisher does more damage than any shotgun. Learn to quick scope.

Black widow or vanquisher.

If you have the black widow at a decent level it does great damage, can pierce cover with appropriate mod, three shot clips.

Vanquisher has that extra shot but cannot pierce cover.

Inferno is also interesting if you can land consecutive headshots.

At lower levels, Vanquisher/Black Widow.

If you're somehow getting your URs to X, possibly Inferno.

Vanquisher still has the distinction of being capable of one-shotting unprotected gold-level mooks with a bullet to the head as the gun, and barrel mod approaches X. If firing from damage-specced cloak/stealth grid, it can one-shot agents, anarchists, sabotours, and pariahs with a bullet to the head.

The piercing mod not working with the Vanquisher is a bug that needs to be fking fixed weeks ago, and is the only real reason black widow is currently worth considering. Well that, and you don't need to level the black widow as much as the Vanquisher to take heads off of shoulders with a single bullet. It's nice to have until you fill out your Common->Rare collection. You should switch to the Vanquisher by then for the extra bullet before reloading, lighter weight, and the Black widow's damage-per-shot-advantage becomes inconsequential in some ways unless you're shooting at something as tough as a berserker, or hydra (and even then, you have one less bullet in the clip).

The black widow looks, and sounds way sexier though.