Browning wrote:It's an age old argument and there will always be guys that argue cheap scopes are fine and guys who argue that it's worth buying expensive scopes.
Personally, I've tried both and nowadays have a 1 or two really nice optics that work well for what I do.
At the end of the day, buy the best YOU can afford/justify and don't look back. Nothing beats experience and use in the field to find what works for you.
One of my mates loves his Leupolds and won't buy anything else; they just work for him (loves his VX6). Whereas I don't really rate them (even though I'm using a similarly priced brand) compared to my current choice but hey, whatever works for you.....
I did a comparison recently between my mated VX6 and my Nikon and the only real diff was a better FOV from the Leupy, it was around 2-3m wider at the ranges we were looking at, other than that we compared them in low light side by side and there wasn't anything between them at all which surprised my mate but didn't surprise me as I'd compared that Nikon to Swaro's and Zeiss etc of diff types and it was right there with em in the low light and brightness etc, I still reckon it has a lot to do with a 50mm Objective and the amount of light it lets in compared to 40mm Objectives - under the light they are much a muchness which is not surprising really, I regularly shoot foxes out around 300m under the light and some of those spotlights we use are pretty ordinary at those ranges (you can just make out something moving with the help of their eyes but through the scope you can see em no probs at all.
I agree buy what best suits your eyes and wallet and I would definitely avoid the el cheapo rubbish but for a budget priced scope the Nikon I have has been a real eye opener to say the least (I would have boo hooed it if I didn't have one to compare to the "Good Stuff" but after comparing it too them I can say I'm happy to own it and those that have compared their "Good Stuff" against it have all been very surprised at how good it goes and how little diff there is between their high end euro scopes and the little Philippines scope!