anyone have experience with Millett, BSA, Truglo, or Barska?
exact same scopes that likely roll off the exact same assembly line with NcStar
China is a big country with a lot of contract manufacturers. Don't have any Millet, but my experience with Barska, BSA and Truglo is way better than anything I've got from NcStar or BEC.
This Barska Red Dot is perhaps my favorite inexpensive optic:
http://www.sportsmansguide.com/net/cb/cb.aspx?a=339227
I've got them on .308, 7.62x39 and .223 rifles and so issues yet.
Now if the design looks exactly like something from NcStar I've tried to avoid buying so far.
That said, I mentioned in my earlier post that some of the recent CDNN "Target Sports" stuff is NcStar when you get it. To be fair I've got their quick detach 4x "mil dot" AR15 scope that I was disappointed to open and see it was NcStar, but so far its been fine, although I've only got in on a very low recoiling 5.45x39 AR upper.
As I said if money is no object just buy the big names and be done with it, but to me, a rifle scope is only an aiming aid, if it lets me shoot tighter groups than I can with the irons and see things at the target I can't see my naked eyes its an improvement and "worth it" as long as it holds zero. For example, while the afore mentioned 4X AR scope is no Leopold, I can see the 5.45mm holes in the target with it at 50 yards, no way can I see them unaided, but the cheap 10x50 binoculars CDNN gave me as a free gift work even better at scoring the target from 50 yards away.
Now with my Leupold 3x9x40 (pretty much bottom of their line) I can score .223 targets at 100 yards in any decent light. But since I prefer shooting reactive targets I don't see the need for expensive optics on most of my guns since I can easily score the hits and misses unaided, so all I really need from a scope is to improve the hit probability over irons. With 50+ year old eyeballs, this doesn't demand state of the art optics
--wally.