(rant)
Every other market seems to have some kind of standard for how to measure their products. The gun market is mixed- example for rifle accuracy, some will advertise: "Less than 1 MOA using precision ammo". Then again, there's the BS of gun safes- not hard to find an 80-gun safe that is smaller than a 64-gun of another brand.
What's the story with scopes? Why isn't there a metric that you can use to compare scopes? And I mean, even within a company's own lines: Nikon has Black/Monarch/Prostaff, etc. I assume the Blacks are better- but by how much? And how do they define better? They're certainly more expensive.
I'm an engineer- if I can't measure it, then I don't trust it. I've got lots of scopes from different brands, and some I 'like' and some are sitting on the shelf- because I don't 'like' them. Can't tell you why- and my family members disagree with some of my thumbs-up/down ratings. This seems to be the case with scopes- and the market probably depends on this purely subjective measure for their own marketing ends- don't like a scope, pay more money or another brand and it will be 'better'. And this intentional obfuscation probably keeps the high-end scope companies in business- they likely are better- but by how much? Worth 4x the price for 1.5x the benefit?
What I'd like to see (standardized) are metrics such as these:
Am I asking too much?
Every other market seems to have some kind of standard for how to measure their products. The gun market is mixed- example for rifle accuracy, some will advertise: "Less than 1 MOA using precision ammo". Then again, there's the BS of gun safes- not hard to find an 80-gun safe that is smaller than a 64-gun of another brand.
What's the story with scopes? Why isn't there a metric that you can use to compare scopes? And I mean, even within a company's own lines: Nikon has Black/Monarch/Prostaff, etc. I assume the Blacks are better- but by how much? And how do they define better? They're certainly more expensive.
I'm an engineer- if I can't measure it, then I don't trust it. I've got lots of scopes from different brands, and some I 'like' and some are sitting on the shelf- because I don't 'like' them. Can't tell you why- and my family members disagree with some of my thumbs-up/down ratings. This seems to be the case with scopes- and the market probably depends on this purely subjective measure for their own marketing ends- don't like a scope, pay more money or another brand and it will be 'better'. And this intentional obfuscation probably keeps the high-end scope companies in business- they likely are better- but by how much? Worth 4x the price for 1.5x the benefit?
What I'd like to see (standardized) are metrics such as these:
- Overall Light transmission % (this takes care of the BS of multi-coated versus fully multicoated, etc.)
- Light distortion % (how much color shift is there)
- Edge distortion (the difference between image accuracy at the center and the edges- which is actually not a huge need for me- as I pretty much only shoot what's in the center, but it would be a metric of a 'better' scope)
- etc.
Am I asking too much?