Went through this last fall. Wind knocked over my bogen tripod mounted minox EFR 21-42x 60mm spotter straight into the concrete. I got it for a decent deal a dozen years prior so I got great usage out of it, wasn’t happy but not heartbroken over its loss either .
Shopping around for a tripod, wound up using lowlights 25% (hide25, IIRC) promo code at Leofoto for a 40mm tripod and panning head setup. Way more stable in the wind than the bogen and much lighter. Huge improvement on the tripod setup.
For a new spotter, I am kind of spoiled as the silhouette group I shoot with has a lot of varied spotters in all price ranges. I get to look through Leupold (old and new), kowa, swarvski, maven, vortex, alpen, burris and athlon. This is for both smallbore (46-109 yards) and high power (200-500 meters).
So what is interesting is that after comparing all these spotters for a couple months, what mattered most to me was eye fatigue over time. We spend a lot of time spotting other relays shots for feedback and then shooting your own rifle. Thats a lot of time behind glass. The swarvski and kowa were tops for image quality ,but they suffered eye fatigue fatigue the same as the rest of the crowd. And to be honest, even though they had top image quality, the other brands really weren’t far behind (except the barska , that one’s IQ hurt to look through). ALMOST ALL OF THESE SCOPES HAD THE SAME PROBLEM FOR ME, small eye relief in the 9-13mm range with a tiny little eyebox. I had to have my eye almost touching the lens it seemed like. However, one of the kowa’s had a fixed 27x power long eye relief lens (LER) installed. That is the one I liked using the most. Didn’t have to have my eye jammed into the lens for a picture.
Also, talking to the various owners on their likes and dislikes was also interesting. The leupold and vortex guys were the least concerned about accidents taking out their equipment because of the manufacturers warranty. The kowa and swarvski guys had this as one of their bigger concerns. The kowa guys also griped that there was no support for their older scope lines from kowa and getting parts was iffy.
So, with all this in mind, I wound up getting a 2nd generation vortex razor 65mm spotting scope. It had available an option most of the others didn’t—— having a LER lens available for purchase as an additional accessory. The wide angle eyepiece LER is a fixed power 18x or 22x (depending if you stick it on the 65mm or 85mm scope) but gives a whopping 31mm of eye relief and a larger FOV. My eyelashes no longer hit the lens when looking through the scope and its a huge forgiving eyebox. Another plus is it is supposedly japanese glass, unlike the 1st gen chinese glass.
That spotting scope has become a favorite at the silo matches. Everyone says the swavarski is a little tiny bit better IQ, but would rather look through the vortex for ease of use. The other most noted opinion is that everyone would rather have the wider FOV than higher magnification, so the vortex fixed 18x razor has been a winner. One of the kowa guys is impressed enough by it that he says that is the way he is going for his next spotter.
Between the LER lens, image quality, manufacturer warranty support and the price, the vortex razor is my choice. It’s nice not worrying about equipment getting broken. I don’t abuse my scope, but it is nice knowing vortex will support it. I had a pair of vortex viper 10x50 binoculars (I got for a steal in 2008) break the right focus ring. Sent it in to vortex and they said it was to old to fix, here is a brand new pair of the current model instead. Can’t beat that for customer support.
