Topic: The Best Rifle Scopes Under $500, Tested and Reviewed (Read 33 times)
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Topic: The Best Rifle Scopes Under $500, Tested and Reviewed (Read 33 times)
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Owing to its wide versatility, the Tract came close to winning our budget riflescope category. It’s clearly configured for an Eastern deer hunter, but it would be equally at home on a mule deer rifle or target rimfire. The heart of the Tekoa HD is its “Impact BDC” reticle, which is designed to be zeroed at 100 yards for standard center-fire calibers (pushing bullets at about 2,800 fps) and 200 yards for magnum calibers, with 3,000 fps velocities). With that zero, the first drop should equate to 200 yards for standard calibers and 300 yards for magnums, and so on until the final drop reference, which is about 500 yards for standard calibers and 600 yards for magnums. Tract has a handy calculator that will give you more precise hold overs for your specific ammo, scope, and environmentals.
Want to stretch your range even farther? Use the top of the lower post on the duplex reticle to get out to 600 yards for standard loads and 700 yards for magnums. With windage references for both 5 and 10 mph right-angle winds, you have all the hold values you need for most hunting situations.
Beyond that versatile reticle, the 15-yard close focus is a great asset for rimfire plinkers, and the capped turrets move with assured precision. The other attribute of the Tract, and a consideration that’s overlooked by a lot of scope-buyers, is the ample mounting dimensions both fore and aft of the turrets. This is a scope that’s easy to mount on long-action receivers, on the quirky dovetail slots of older .22s, and on any rail. Also worth noting: the Tract’s tool-less rezeroable turrets that require only the removal of a threaded cap to allow the indexed turret to be moved to a new zero. It’s a simple, smart, and very useful design. Like the Meopta, the Tekoa HD has excellent glass.
The only consideration where the Tract lost ground to the category-winning Meopta: on our price/value assessment. The Tekoa HD retails for $499, at the very tippy-top of our under-$500 cap, and some testers thought that was a little rich. It’s worth noting, however, that as a direct-to-consumer brand, Tract doesn’t mark up its optics for retail distribution, an indication that even at $500, this is a lot of scope for the price.
Just about any scope in this category can capably serve a Midwest whitetail hunter, but the Burris Signature, which has been on the market since 2020, has a few attributes that allow users to reach out across the distances sometimes required for elk, mule deer, and pronghorns. The scope’s excellent reticle and exposed locking turrets allow shooters to either hold or dial aiming solutions.
The Signature is available with four different reticles, both fine and bold plex designs, a BDC version with 6.5 Creedmoor holds, and the Ballistic E3 MOA, which is the version we tested. Tapered plex stadia bracket a fine center aiming cross, but what gives the E3 so much versatility are the three hash steps that allow shooters to hold out to 400 yards with a 100-yard zero. Cascading dots enable hold-offs for 10 mph right-angle winds out to distance, and 2 MOA hashes on the horizontal crosshair also inform wind holds. It’s a simple, useful, and fast reticle, but because it’s in the second focal plane, magnification will dictate subtensions.
The low-profile turrets pull to turn, and feature a handy rezeroable feature. Loosen a locking screw on the turret cap and you can reset the zero in the field, if necessary. Also in the plus column, a light 17.6-ounce build and a handy length of just 11.7 inches, making the Signature a good co*panion to a lightweight mountain rifle.
On the minus column, the glass. The Burris scored in the middle of the field in both optical resolution and low-light performance, and the lack of manual parallax created some focus problems for testers. But the team felt the price, around $400, is fair for the wide utility of this nimble, smart scope.
A very good all-around scope that smart shoppers will be able to buy for about $250, the Diamondback underwhelmed on our optics evaluation, but charmed our test team on our “shootability” assessment. It’s a versatile workhorse that’s home on rimfires to centerfire deer rifles.
We can’t talk about the Diamondback without mentioning what I would call a fixable failure. Part of our test is assessing turret/reticle tracking. We shoot every submission at 25 yards at a Redfield Sight-In target, using the grids to measure precision as we dial up, right, down, and left, and then back to our original zero. It’s a test that assesses precision and mechanical reliability. At some point, after wowing testers with exceptional precision, the Diamondback’s elevation turret locked up. We took the turret apart, gave it a few sharp raps on the bench, and things straightened out. But it’s the sort of performance problem that most shooters would use to activate Vortex’s legendary warranty.
Outside of that hiccup, the Diamondback’s mechanics are adequate. We noted some stickiness of the turrets and magnification ring, but the turret/reticle agreement are right-on. The “Dead-Hold BDC” reticle is similarly useful. We’d like to see a little more definition of the reticle, which gives shooters more than a suggestion of holdover and holdoff hashes, and which could be more distinctive and provide faster aiming references.
The Vortex performed well on our resolution test, but disappointed in low-light performance. But where the Diamondback shined was in our price/value assessment. There’s a ton of value in this simple, honest, and versatile scope. And if it fails, it’s important to know that Vortex and its fully transferable lifetime warranty has your back. All that optical talent, and all that back-end support, allowed the Vortex to be a very close runner-up for our Great Buy award.
Score Card
Key Features
Pros
Cons
No scope in our budget category caused as much consternation and conversation as Athlon’s throwback Talos BTR. Some thought that the fixed 10-power construction was too limiting, others countered that the 10x magnification is the perfect co*panion to a MIL-based reticle, which is based on a power-of-10 scale. It should be noted that the Talos BTR Gen 2 co*es in three different configurations, ranging from a 1-4×24 version and a 4-14×44 version. Like the 10×42 scope, these other versions co*e in either MIL or MOA-based reticles.
Our 10×42 sample didn’t wow us optically. Its low-light performance was near the bottom of the field, and its resolution was better, but not by much. Testers liked its vibrant and distortion-free image, and gave high marks to both its interior aiming system (which considers the reticle style, clarity, and utility) and exterior aiming system (turret positivity, turret indexing, and ability to return to zero after shooting a square grid). Testers reckoned that, with an excellent close-focus capability, this is an excellent rimfire scope that can step up into just about any mid-magnification center-fire task.
Are you going to mount the Talos BTR on a close-range turkey shotgun or a dangerous-game rifle? Probably not. But it would be a good choice for a long-range silhouette target scope or atop an elk rifle. The Talos BTR is built around a useful hash-style reticle that offers 10 MIL holdover references and 8 MIL windage references on either side of the .09 MIL center dot. Because the Athlon is built on a second-plane system, the reticle references don’t change, so you get a second-plane scope that operates pretty much as a first-plane scope works, and the hashes are useful for everything from rimfire plinking to medium-range target work, though serious shooters will be disappointed not to have windage holds on either side of the vertical stadia.
Because of the simplicity of the design—no power-changing gears to strip or bind—we expect the Talos to be a long-wearing optic. But in case of malfunctions, Athlon’s lifetime transferable warranty is a co*forting consolation.
Our team’s final conclusion is that the Athlon’s wide versatility and extremely useful MIL-based reticle—along with its extremely appealing price—qualified the Talos BTR Gen 2 as our Great Buy in the Budget Riflescope category, which because it’s co*peting against price-point peers, is a double bonus for a handy, smart, and useful scope.
I hope you’re picking up on one of the themes of this category: For every merit is a demerit, and for every asset is a liability. That dichotomy is on full display with Sightmark’s solid and approachable Presidio.
Testers had a hard time determining the quality of its glass. It scored near the bottom of our low-light test—especially surprising because the Presidio boasts a big 50mm objective lens—but it posted decent resolution scores. Testers rated its optical quality near the middle of the pack of budget scopes.
The HDR2 reticle similarly received mixed reviews. Some found the reticle, which features a .2 MOA illuminated floating center dot and three elevation references that enable holdovers out to 20 MOA, to be a fast, simple, and relatively intuitive hunting reticle. Others wanted either more or fewer references inside the German 4 plex design.
Regardless, the Presidio brings features, namely parallax adjustment and reticle illumination, rarely found on price-point scopes. And for an MSRP of $400, Sightmark throws in decent lens caps and a throw lever, which further boosts its value proposition. The Presidio was one of a handful of rifle scopes that co*peted hard for our Great Buy award, and was held back mainly by its limited lifetime warranty that applies to the original purchaser with proof of purchase. Many of its peers offer fully transferrable lifetime warranties.
Overall, it’s a useful scope that should get strong consideration as a rimfire optic that can do double duty on a deer rifle.
With more varieties and configurations of rifle scopes than just about any brand around, Hawke has a scope for just about any platform, including airguns and crossbows. The Vantage 30 WA, which has been on the market for a few years, brings wide utility, rather than niche specialization, to shooters. The scope is built around a fairly pedestrian 4A duplex reticle, which benefits from both red and green illumination.
The center dot subtends 3.5 MOA at 4-power, with 5 MOA of drop to the top of the lower vertical stadia, and nearly 30 MOA of drop to the lower bold crosshair. But that level of precision will be lost on most shooters, who will correctly us