I think athlon put in alot of features for $1400 ,personally I could of given up the illumination and even the zero stop(I do like the feature but find I don't use it all that regularly)for better optical quality.i find after an hour behind the glass and I'm drained in the old eyes.i was shooting 223 and 22lr on Monday with all 3 scopes.the mirage at 200 was not bad but wasn't great and found my self using the match pro or the gen 2 pst vortex to see the 22lr hits at 200 yards.i could see them faintly in the beginning with the ares but after a few hrs it strained my eyes were the match pro or vortex didn't.but the match pro has no lume or zero stop but is also a $780.00 scope.i used the strike eagle for an afternoon and it was not the quality of the gen 2 pst it was equally as good as the ares,maybe?the athlon looks darker.