Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Rifle Scopes Made in Asia

For years, scopes manufactured in Asia - China particularly - have been the subject of much suspicion.

How are they going these days in the view of gun writers or others in the know?

I've always been leery of buying them but lately have relented and bought a couple. I've been surprised with the image quality and the zero-holding ability.

Redfield, Bushnell and other companies are having some of their scopes made in Asia (not Japan). Someone told me recently that even Leupold has a rangefinder made in China (?).

What say ye? Are things on the up-and-up for these budget priced optics?

You get what you pay for.

What I mean by that specifically is, don't buy a $40 blister-pack Wally-World special and expect it to perform like A luepy Mark 4...or Mark 2, for that matter.

That said, once out of the lower end junk that was always junk, no matter where made, if you pony up bit for better glass and some coatings, and some build integrity, you can get some very nice glass made in Asia.

I have spent 20+ years in procurement, and from my experience, the move to Asia for this is that some (not all) producers/sellers recognize that Asia has a good low-cost workforce and the region combines that with good support in the area of production assembly and clean room conditions. this as opposed to say Mexico or India or some parts of South America, where you have cheap labor, but a lack of skills and industrial support mentioned above.

This of course is from a manufacturing perspective. I would be very interested to hear what Mule Deer has to say about this, as he has considerable hands on experience with the end product, far more than I do.

bobnob,

Scopes have been made in Asia for a number of years now. There's no reason various Asian factories can't make scopes as good as factories any other industrialized countries.

A lot of shooters predicted doom when Burris started having their Fullfield II line made in the Phillipines. As soon as I got my hands on one I made my usual tests, which include adjustments, optics, waterproofing, etc.--and the mechanical tests include firing, not just sticking them on a rifle and watching the reticle move across a collimator screen. As far as I could determine, the Phillipine-made scope was a little better and a recently made American FFII, mostly in finish. As an example, the threads in the scope caps and on the turrets were noticeably smoother than on the American-made scope. In every other way the Phillipine-made scope was at least equal to the American scope, including optically.

However, Burris provided some of the tooling and training for the Phillipine factory, so it made sense for the scopes to be essentially the same. Many other Asian scopes are contracted: The company selling them goes to an Asian company and says they want X and Y features at a certain price-point, and the Asian company makes the scopes to those specs. If the seller opts to have things done cheaply, the scopes won't be all that good. But if they spend the money to do make the scopes right, then they'll be pretty good scopes. Or at least they will if somebody tests a few along the way.

Quite a few Asian-made scopes (and binoculars) are essentially the same, but have different brand-names on the outside, depending on which company orders them. Though sometimes there may be small internal differences, depending specifically on what the selling company orders.

There's already been a considerable jump in quality in Asian scopes since companies first started having optics made there. The same thing occurred with Japanese optics, and eventually they gained the reputation of as good as anything made. Some Chinese binoculars have already become so good they've affected the overall market considerably, especially among people who compare binoculars constantly (such as bird-watchers) rather than buy them on brand recognition alone.

The Simmons Whitetail Classic 3.5-10x40s made in the Philippines seem like good scopes. I have twelve of them on lesser rifles in the .22LR thru 7x57 class. All are still in service and working fine.

All right then I will 'fess up and tell you all what the cheap Chinese scopes I have recently bought are...

A Bushnell AR Optics 4.5-18x40 which I have put on a budget LR 308. I got the rifle - an Omark / Sportco heavy barrel range rifle - for nothing, put a 20 moa steel rail on it and thought "Bugger it I am not forking out 1000 bucks for a scope for it at this stage."

Though I don't - and may never - shoot it in low light, it has been great out to 750y so far with the only several hundred rounds I have shot through it. Very very clear, repeatable turret adjustments, and not the slightest hint of losing zero. The only hint of trouble is that when you start to get further out than 650y, the amount of adjustment you wind on tends to increase in non linear fashion slightly. For the money I am very happy.


The other is a Vortex Crossfire II 4-12x44 with standard duplex reticle. Again the clarity is very very good. This one is on a Zastava 270 Win and I've not done as much work with it yet, but I've been similarly impressed.


Build quality and finish on both looks very good as at least as good as my Bushnell 4200s, Jap made Sightrons and a couple of Redfield Revolutions.

Image quality in all cases seems a little better or at least as good for both the new cheapies.


You might have guessed I no longer own any real high end glass. So you might argue I am starting from a low baseline, but I have owned and shot plenty of Leupold, Kahles and the like, especially doing kangaroo and pig culling under spotlights.

I would not be hesitant to use either of these Chinese scopes for such work.


I suspect the real test is that of longevity. Only time will tell there.

I can remember when Jap cars were considered junk and "tin cans". Now, they make some of the finest cars in the world.

S. Korean cars started out, probably better than early Jap cars, but just nothing special. Now, look at what they're doing.

My point being, just because a certain country made some junk doesn't mean they can't make some great stuff.

From what I've seen, the Chinese can make just as fine a product as the buyer is willing to pay for.

It's about the bucks, market demand, profit margin, etc. We'll have the product quality we're willing to pay for. It's the market at work.

DF

Among other problems that I have with China is their penchant for making/selling unauthorized knock-off copies. Often very good fakes, but fakes never the less.

It comes down to:
1. Design
2. Quality of the components used
3. The Quality Management Systems
4. Management "buy in" and support for "3".

I've heard many statements similar regarding Tasco scopes. Depending on where they were made they were supposedly decent quality. Some made in Japan were good, others made in the Philippines were trash. I never took that risk and bought what I knew was good that was built here. I was once a person who needed enough rifles to outfit a battalion. Now I'm down to three so buying a good quality scope for each is much more affordable.

The real problem with optics built in Asia is that your friends and neighbors are not employed in their manufacture.

Quality, service and availability being more or less equal, I will always buy product built in the US or Canada, even if it costs a bit more.

Lacking that option, I will consider product from those countries whose government is not actively engaged in putting our people out of business.

^^^^^^^^^^THIS^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

So answer this:

What if the optics company is American, and all they are doing is contracting with Chinese companies to make parts, and then assembling scopes and binoculars here in America?

Or what if a similar company is buying parts from SEVERAL countries, only one of which is China?Or if they're doing the same thing with a Japanese company? Remember Japan, the country that we fought part of a World War against?

Here's something else: All-American optics companies have been failing, or turning into importing firms, for decades now. In fact I can't think of any right now that make EVERYTHING here.

Manufacturing is a world-wide business these days, and just about every mechanical product is a combination of parts from all over the world.

Owning just three rifles wouldn't interest me. Heck, I've bought three rifles this month!

An excellent moment of clarity MD. There has been, indeed, globalization. And, overall, it seems an improvement in quality.

Good points and relevant. You cannot and should not seal yourself off from the rest of the world. That said, I do not believe that throwing up your hands and surrendering our manufacturing base without a fight is good long-term policy.

I am nearing retirement, having spent the bulk of my working life in manufacturing and distribution of aluminum extrusion. I admit this leaves me feeling protective of the many hundreds of my co-workers.

Surviving as a manufacturer in global economy is tough - you have to work smart and hard. We do both and have been rewarded with living wage paychecks. I am very aware that the success of my company depends on the trust and support of the thousands of firms, both supply side and customers, who have made this possible. This network, primarily US and Canadian, has left me in a position to repay the favor - something I try to do when possible.

When is the last time Rifle or Handloader cashed a check from Shanghai? I am guessing you are more likely to find support in Utah than Taiwan.

Achieving absolute domestic-product-only purity at the checkout counter is a thing of the past but, when possible, it does no harm to remember who your friends and neighbors are.

The economic reality-crunch might be coming to the US, though it is not my place to comment in detail.

But because of the cost of manufacturing in a region not far from Asia, within 2 years there will be NO motor cars of any breed being manufactured in Australia. None.

Obviously the US economy and particularly the car manufacturing scene is much bigger than ours, but the same thing could happen to you.

I hope it doesn't for your sake. If it does, it will happen with rifle scopes probably before it happens with cars.

These threads are always amusing. I have been buying oil and gas materials and equipment from Asia for years whose services are a touch hairier than that of a rifle scope.

Just bought a Tasco so called "World Class" 4-16X scope to put on a back up prairie dog rifle. After mounting it in the rings I attempted to turn the vertical adjustment turret while bore sighting and it is locked up farmer tight. Called Tasco customer service (now owned by Bushnell) and asked them for a return authorization. Was told to go back to where I bought it because Tasco/Bushnell would take 4-6 weeks to replace it. I replied that the long turn around time was understandable because of the huge number of returns due to lack of any quality control. There are Asia scopes and then there is China junk.

The only reason "junk" scopes exist, from any source, is that so many shooters are eager to save a few bucks they'll take any sort of chance.

The sellers of all but a very few expensive brands of scopes (and many other products) know a certain percentage will fail in one way or another. However, they can't afford to make them "fail-proof" or they wouldn't sell many--which is why Nightforce, Schmidt & Bender and other scopes costing well over $1000 aren't purchased by people looking for a scope to put on a "back-up prairie dog rifle." (And even NF and S&B's fail, just at not as great a rate.)

Most scope companies know that 99% of the scopes purchased in America will be mounted on rifles that kick less than a .300 magnum (which seems to be the recoil-point that really starts breaking scopes). Most of those rifles won't be fired more than 20-50 times a year, if that. Those that are shot more usually recoil a lot less, because they're either rimfires or low-recoiling varmint centerfires.

Consequently relatively few scopes priced under $1000 will fail, even though they're not built like a Nightforce or Schmidt & Bender. It makes far more sense to replace, say, 3% of the scopes a company sells than to spend far more money building scopes that almost never fail.

Because of what I do a wide variety of scopes show up here, and get mounted on rifles and shot. They're made in a bunch of different countries, and real-world retail will run anywhere from under $100 to over $2000.

At last count, scopes of 16 different brands and all economic levels had failed in one way or another when mounted on my rifles, purely from shooting. And you've come to the conclusion that because one Chinese-made scope failed on your rifle, that all Chinese scopes are junk?

This is a sage observation. I fly to/from China fairly regularly for my job as a pilot. From what I've seen the Chinese can manufacture world class products as evidenced by the tons of Iphones I've hauled out of there. The thing with the Chinese however is that you've got to watch them and hold their feet to the fire on quality control or they'll try and cut corners on you. They're not like the Japanese that have a national sense of pride that won't let them do that, the Chinese will swindle and cut corners on you every chance they get to skim a few extra bucks. Big companies like Apple and Nikon know this and have robust QC programs in place to keep the quality up. I feel relatively safe buying Chinese made products from a big name company. The problems seem to arise when you have smaller companies contracting Chinese made products to sell under their name and they don't have on site oversight of the manufacturing process. I know several of the old owner/management at Primos in passing and they admit they had a devil of a time with their game cameras when they first came to market. They were getting whole shipping containers of cameras that were non-functional that they'd have to reject. The ones they did sell had a very high failure rate and it was a major headache for them. I think the problem was they didn't have much oversight of the manufacturing so the Chinese took liberties to cut corners whenever they could. Bushnell has bought them out now & I don't know if they've got the quality up or not.