VHII,
The man that wrote that article sent me that same scope to evaluate myself. I used it around the house here in varying light conditions, at different yardages, etc. They're not to bad, but to me it wasn't as good as it was talked up to be though. Personal opinion only. Also let me state that I am not an optical expert. I use spotting scopes and bigeyes a lot. That's it. I go by ease of use, what can I see as compared to the glasses next to me, contrast of objects against a similar colored background behind it, etc.
I took that scope with me to 2 matches up in Virginia and set it up next to all the other brands and just kept going back and forth between them. To me they didn't match up with any of the good name single spotting scopes in any department let alone the bigeye setups. And the biggest draw back to me was the very limited field of view when comparing all the models I was viewing through and all on the same power. The Meade had the smallest field-of-view of all of them. I was comparing them to Bushnell single spotting scopes, (can't remember the model),top of the line Swarovski, Old B&L long tube big eyes, Bushenell Spacemaster big eyes, Kowa TSN-82?? single spotting scope with the 45 degree eye piece, and a set of Kowa bigeyes.
The old B&L bigeyes were the best I used that day. Kowa's bigeyes were next but very close. All sets were collmenated(sp??).
I let other shooters look and compare also and the ability to "see" with the Meade as compared to the other scopes weren't on the same level. To me the Meade seemed like I was looking through a filter of some sort and gave an overall darker shading when viewing.
For the price you get a decent set of glass though. So it's all in what you are looking for. If this is for an all-weather type situation, I've never seem their advertisements, but I wouldn't say the Meade scope is water proof at all and probably not water resistant either IMO.
My 2 cents worth. Remember that my evaluation is from looking and comparing, not from an optical expert point-of-view. Hope this helps.
Steve
