A good part of scope quality is how good you can see things with it. Resolution. Just this afternoon I did an interesting test with five scopes, that you guys would call low end.
It was a quite bright, over cast day. I pinned up material with large print at about 100 yards. I was looking about 45 degrees away from the bright part of the sky, so lens coatings would play a part in my test.
I had an old USA Burris, 2 to 8 power, a new Bushnell 3200 Elite, 1.5 to 4.5, both of which I set to 4x, plus three scopes of fixed 4x. I set up a good rest and carefully adjusted each eye piece to the best position for me.
Then, over the rest, I tried to see with which scope I could read the printing the best.
The three fixed 4x scopes were an old Redfield, an old Tasco and an old (ancient?) Lyman All American.
Sitting behind my rest I would try one scope, then another, until all had been checked, then do it again. When I thought I had the best one, I would put it down and try another against it, and so on.
The bottom line was they were all so close to being equal, that I could not get up and swear which one gave me the best vision on the print!
While I may have to do another similar test to see whether or not there was a sure winner, the one I would pick after this test that appeared to give the sharpest definition, was the Lyman All American.
I was very glad that I had the new, modern Bushnell to test along with the old timers, to keep things in prospective.