The furthest wooden log in those pictures is 100 yards. The slope of the hill that the scope is pointed at is a bit further than that. ~125 yards or so. The metal plate on the lower right part of the image is at 100 yards and is what I use for offhand practice (which is why I was on that side of the range).
That reticle is not available in the 1.5-8x to the best of my knowledge, so I am not sure how you managed to hate it there. The large circle makes a big difference at low magnifications to me.
The Ballistic Dot reticle in the 1-8x24 is in the second focal plane, so it is a very different use case. I have some time with it, but with 1-8x24 I prefer FFP, which is why I focused on the scope I reviewed.
Trijicon is a nice scope, but I do not like segmented circles very much. Also, the segmented circle part of the reticle is too large at aroudn 20 mrad than I like in a FFP design. I do like mil scale in the Trijicon reticle. I think 10 mrad circle in the Burris reticle is more useful for speed.
The illumination in the Trijicon is a little dimmer and the distortion at 1x is more prominent.
Trijicon is a nice design, but I think Burris works better for me at low magnifications.
ILya