I have a gold ring and I'm pleased with it. It cost around $700. Then they have the Gold Ring HD (high deffinition) which is a little bit more, and probably worth it.
I've tried several others and was disgusted with the optical quality. A good 30 or 40x will nuke a mediocre 60x in terms of the detail you can see with it. I bet the Leupold you're looking at is better than mediocre, however.
It's just that you need to be looking at resolution, rather than magnification. Big difference. The former trumps the latter every time. For example, I can see more detail through my 14x riflescope than I can through any cheap 30x spotting scopes, and it's on par with my $350, 20x Japanese binocs. That means I have zero use for any cheap spotter-- I'd rather use the riflescope as a spotter if I'm looking downrange. The Leupold Gold Ring is the first spotter I've owned that had better resolution than my riflescope, hence it is worth keeping. It's also one of the few I've tried anywhere that had enough eye relief to use while wearing glasses, hence it is one of the two or three I've seen anywhere that I would ever consider buying. (you do shoot with safety glasses on, right?)
If the Leupold you're looking at has good resolution and good eye relief, it may to the trick for you. At a guess I'd say a 500 dollar Leupold spotter is probably on the edge of where you start getting something useable.
That is, unless you're only interested in spotting bullet holes at 100 yards AND you don't use a telescope of 8x or more on your rifle. In that case, any 150 dollar spotter will work nicely.
