Thanks for the quick assessment southern biker
I have yet to grab a Philippine made XTR IIIi but would like to at some point when the time is right. Your comments on the knurling remind me of the US made XTR III which someone coined as being "dragon scales" a while back and it's stuck with me, because that knurling feels like it will rip your skin off. I had both a US made 3.3-18 and 5.5-30 and the 5.5-30 had "easier" controls but still a bit tight. That is my biggest gripe with these scopes; however, at the current price point I am not going to complain, especially now that they have illumination. For there current price point there is not much that can compete when it comes to the optical performance - glass, edge to edge clarity, FOV and mag range all make for what I think is one of the best price
erformance ratios on the market. For $1k street (sometimes less) I just don't see much competition here, Leupold Mark 4 may provide some but as previously mentioned at the cost of FOV but different things matter to all of us so it's great we have these choices. The PST was mentioned above, I am quite surprised that Vortex has taken so long to come out with a PST III line especially when Burris released their XTR III in 2018, if Vortex came out with a PST III line with improved glass and price point around $1k I think we'd finally have some competition here, but until that happens I don't see much that will change the XTR IIIi being one of the better values at its current price.