How can you justify a 2-3000 dollar scope?

first, a shocking percentage of snipers/swat guys have truly crappy equipment. they use what they are issued and depts are cheap. so i wouldn't use that as a guide. vast majority of their engagements are under 100 yards and on very large targets, so their requirements are really not that high.

to get reasonably impressive glass, you probably have to spend $1700+ these days. some of that glass is pretty awesome, but it's mostly not needed for almost any shooting application and you also really need some education to know what to look for or they will mostly look the same. there is a difference between clarity, resolution, light transmission, a couple types of distortion, color fidelity, and such things as the recent brouhaha over chromatic aberration.

maybe 4+ years ago, you had to spend that much money to get features you wanted, like FFP, and adjustments that tracked and knobs that didn't suck (e.g. single or double turn, zero stops, locking turrets, good detents, etc). but now, there are some cheap scopes with those features too. but they do make compromises. for example, their exit pupil often leaves a lot to be desired.

so paying $3k for a scope these days is something you should only do if you need all of the above: outstanding glass, good exit pupil and eye relief, and FFP, and knob features. and higher reliability.


if you really want to prove to yourself the differences, i'd strongly recommend NOT just going and looking through them side by side. Without knowing what to look for, you will just come away with the wrong impression.

instead go prepared with some charts. google them to get some examples to print out. to be honest, the birdwatchers are way better at this than gun people and way way more picky about their optics. so look around their binocular and spotter and camera forums a bit.

Get a resolution chart like this and look at it from a long way away through various scopes and see which ones you can make out the smaller lines on and which ones you can't. use it kind of like the chart at your eye doc.


get a similar chart like a color wheel and see how each scope renders colors.

look up instructions on how to perform a box test and try it.

move your eye forward/back/left/right and see how much room you have on each scope before the vignetting starts. AND see if you can dial the parallax out while you're doing that so that the crosshairs appear to not move at all relative to the target while you're moving your head.

etc etc etc

for 22lr target shooting, you need to think about what scope features you really need.

1. you need contrast, not colors.
2. knobs that track perfectly are nice, but with those friggin tiny bullseyes, what you really need is for the zero to not shift at all. those close range bullseye are very unforgiving!
3. you need parallax either set at the distance you plan to shoot (and you test it, not just believe what the box says), or that is adjustable and comfortably covers the range you need to shoot. many $3000 scopes have parallax adjustments that only go down to 50 meters or so. small bore matches usually go from 50' to 50m. -ish.
4. you don't need a lot of eye relief, since 22lr recoil isn't going to give you scopeeye or break your nose
5. you don't need a large exit pupil since you will always put your head in the same position for those competitions. (or at least try to, and a small exit pupil will remind you if you're out of position)

(ignore that if he's using his target rifle for squirrel hunting or something)

hah, well good. that's a whole lot more fun than smallbore

I do believe that a scope that will hold zero is more important than astronomy grade glass.

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even the guys paying $3k for glass would agree with that

My AR (Colt, crp-18), is a solid 2.

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you should do a review of that. i'd love to hear what you think of that rifle