Vortex Viper HD 15x45x65 spotting scope thoughts! (1 Viewer)

[tonytoned]

Hello Everyone*

I was wondering what some of your thoughts are on the Vortex Viper HD 15x45x65 spotting scope. I currently have a Hawke Endurance ED 16x48x68 spotting scope which I've had for about 2 years and found it quite good value for money. Comparing it with the Vortex Viper HD 15x45x65 I don't find much difference between them optically. Except for the focussing of course.
I look forward to your feed back and thank you very much for your time*

Tony

***

 

[lmans66]

Hello Everyone*

I was wondering what some of your thoughts are on the Vortex Viper HD 15x45x65 spotting scope. I currently have a Hawke Endurance ED 16x48x68 spotting scope which I've had for about 2 years and found it quite good value for money. Comparing it with the Vortex Viper HD 15x45x65 I don't find much difference between them optically. Except for the focussing of course.
I look forward to your feed back and thank you very much for your time*

Tony

***

Get a Zeiss Conquest, Nikon or Opticron...... instead.

 

[Peregrine Took]

I know this is an old thread, but people might still come across it. For clarity, I'm referring to the latest Vortex scopes, as of October 2023.

I recently bought a new Razor HD 13-39 x 56 for a steal of a price and liked it, both optically and ergonomically, but sold it because I wanted a bit more light gathering - and I was able to make a decent profit from the Razor, on e8ay.

So I visited my local optical dealer and compared the Viper HD 15-45 x 65 (at the top end of my budget) with an Opticron MM4 60 with the SDLv3 eyepiece. Optically, there was nothing between them - both sharp, both showing minuscule false colour - but the Opticron had a MUCH wider field of view - my guess was 20% wider at least. With the Vortex, it was like looking through a tube, whereas the Opticron was more immersive. The wider field of view also gave the impression of being brighter.

Not sure why the suggestion above say buy a Zeiss Conquest, because as far as I'm aware there isn't a Conquest scope, but my recommendation would be to buy the Opticron, for about the same money as the Vortex, unless you much prefer barrel focus and a hood, the absence of which is the Opticron's only failing.

(As an aside, I also tried the latest Vortex Diamondback because the dealer had a used one. This scope has the worst false colour (magenta) that I've ever seen in a scope. I think a well-known review online comes to the same conclusion, but please try it for yourself.)

 

[Peregrine Took]

Just thought I'd return to my comments of six months ago, since I realise I might have misled with a generalisation. I said that the Vortex had a very narrow field of view, but this was really only apparent at the long end of magnification, which is where I was comparing it to the Opticron MM4 (I only really viewed long-range objects when testing).

If using the scopes at shorter distances - say under 30 metres - the specs suggest that the angle of view is similar, although you might expect a 60mm scope to have a wider FOV than a 65mm scope at 15x. Not exactly apples and oranges, but it was probably a little hard on the Vortex to compare it to a smaller objective scope.
.

 

[chill6x6]

So the "angle of view" is the "angle of view" regardless of distance. One thing you CAN do to compare FOV between scopes is to set each to the same magnification and THEN compare FOVs. Some heads have a degrees scale so it's pretty easy to do.