Exact same sentiment I feel. How's the Leupold compare to the NX8?
Long story, but it's single digits outside so here goes.
About the time the wide zoom angle ffp scopes were coming out my hunting style was changing. At the time my compliment was irons or red dot on a bear gun, a 3 to 9 or 3 to 10 for my alaska general hunting rig and a slew of big dialing ffp scopes for tromping around in the high desert of the west.
Human nature always wants one silver bullet, so when the nx8 came out it checked a pile of boxes. 2.5x on the low end was just wide enough in theory to make rapid close shots, it was ffp with reticles that worked OK across the range and 20x is more than plenty for even ground squirrels at range. All in a relatively compact and reasonable weight package.
In reality it was a 4-20 scope, tunneled pretty hard on the low end and was darker at each side of the range than you'd expect for a then 2 grand scope. Figured they had slightly out shot available tech in a similar way as the 10x erector experience I'd had with a march.
When leupold did the mark 5hd my thoughts were, "hey they are honest about the engineering capacities and went for what is now a middle of the 5x erector." While that's true, the 3.6 low end had a 28.3 foot 100 yard fov.... good enough for my haphazard foray into rimfie prs. Certainly leaves a bit on the table if your wanting wide fov for a jumped or heavy cover animal. Friend has used it from time to time when we're comparing it to other toys we drag home. His description was it's the 10 year old silver Toyota camry of the equivalent scope segment. Doesn't do anything spectacular, doesn't do anything bad it's 12 inches and 26 oz of "scope". Haven't bought another, but don't feel like passing it down the road.... how's that for a vanilla review.
Had high hopes for the 2-10, but it's chunky for what it is and 30mm objective is a little dark for playing around in the winter at the latitude I've found interesting.
My bias would be the Athlon 2-12, but made to nx-8 (but a 6x errector) quality. Heck I'd pony for atacr quality with those specs.
Right now one of my hunting buddy has a 4-16 atacr and an offset rmr. My criticism of it being hefty is met with a laugh and several jokes about skipping cheese burgers and manning up....
First world problem for sure, but one none the less.
