The 65mm alpha scopes are 1-2K and getting one is a serious investment. The Celestron Ultima 65 ED, for its quality and price, was refered to as 'a steal' on this forum. The Hawke Nature Trek ED 65 has exactly the same specs as the Celestron, so it is probably the same scope, different livery, but comes with, soft case, hard case , zoom eyepiece threaded for T-adapter, optional WA eyepieces and digiscoping accesories, and a 10 yr warranty. The Celestron has been discontinued but probably still obtainable for about the same price.
I have the Hawke Frontier ED 8x43 bins which are so bright that viewing birds up close, the colours glisten. I had a similar view of a magpie in my garden with the Hawke ED 65. In the bright sunshine, no problems with clarity and brightness at 48x. On a dull late afternoon, view is clearly dimmer at 32x upwards, but still able to see the white spots and yellow bill of starlings in the south approx 300ft away. I cannot distinguished these features clearly with a 60mm non ED spotting scope, nor a 102mm non ed telescope (too much chromatic aberration).
I am very pleased with the scope, but having not compared directly with alpha scopes, clearly cannot tell how it would stack up. Being not an expert on optics, I cannot comment on the various aberrations, but have not noticed any distortions that would detract from my enjoyment of the view. The Hawke brand is clearly a new comer in the birding world and it is likely that most birders will stick with the well known brands.
I rated this product at 8 as I suspect the Hawke Endurance ED and Frontier ED are optically better, and possibly the alphas are even better.
