Click on the 15 second video at the bottom of the link. Man if it would brighten things up that much I better start replacing every scope I have....lol.
https://www.leupold.com/hunting-shooting/scopes/vx-3i-riflescopes/

All sport optics gather light. You aren't likely to see Jupiter's moons with the naked eye, but you can with decent binoculars. My cheap Vari-X I 1-4X Leupold's crosshairs are visible well after the front sight on the rifle disappears. But more $$ buys more light transmission.

I know... but that video seems a little too good to be true!

I have both VX3 3.5-10x40 and a VX3i in the same model and today at the range at dusk I couldn't tell any difference between these two in brightness or light gathering ability with My untrained eye, they Looked equally good to me...........Hb

Maybe because it is .

Well, we all have varying degrees of night vision, visual acuity, etc,...but I suspect this posting will sum up what most of us would say.
Gotta love the 'fire and the opportunity to get advice and opinion.

Heck I'd probably be real happy if it had half of the light transmission they're showing in that video lol.

I don't want to accuse Leopold of false advertising but I might compare it to all the election year advertising we're about to see!?

Is a company says they are dropping the price on a new product that they say has the same performance and is a replacement, you have to ask yourself, how does this scope suck more?

Price dropping doesn't happen in the business world for the reasons leupold is claiming...

I hate to dispute you based on semantics, but that is incorrect. No sport optics "gather" light. That is a term that is widely misused, probably as a result of optics company marketing jargon. "Gathering" infers actively increasing or intensifying, meaning greater than 100% of ambient light. All optics passively "transmit" light. There are always light losses due to coatings, internal reflections, and the transmissivity of the glass itself. The more lenses or glass-air surfaces inside the optic, the greater the light loss. The reason an optic gives the impression of "turning on the light" is because of the effects of magnification on the human brain, and the color spectrum of light an optic transmits. If an optic has coatings that allow more light in the blue spectrum to pass through, it gives the appearance of intensifying the available light. Of course, the larger the objective size, the greater the amount of light that reaches your eye. At best, any optic might transmit 90-95% of available light. That's best case scenario. This means best case, it can never "gather" anything.

Also, more $ doesn't always give you greater light transmission. In fact there are some moderately priced scopes that transmit more light than some high $ scopes. But, in a general sense, it is true that if you want maximum light transmission, you generally have to pay a premium for it.

Greg, certainly you can cut 1 or 2 days off of each of your hunts AND promise an increase of at least 5 B&C points per animal...all the while cutting the cost of your hunts.....c'mon man! Grin.

They have cut their lineup as far as finishes and models offered, and I'm sure they have lowered their costs, as claimed. Yes, it's true that other companies do not pass along their savings to customers. If they would, it wouldn't seem so strange.
There is another possibility- They were overcharging for the previous VX-3 line because of the many different models available. If they would have cut the models back, but made no more changes, their cost would have also gone down. But, there would have also been complaints for dropping certain models in a lineup. So, they just nix the whole lineup, introduce a new model, and only offer it in a more limited range of choices.

One thing I don't understand is how the MSRP for the 1.5-5, 2.5-8, and 3.5-10 are all the same. There is no way their cost is the same on a straight 1" tube with smaller lenses, as it is on a 40mm belled tube with larger lenses. Unless of course, again, they are basing it on expected sales volume.

Things that make you go hmmmmmmm.....

What I find interesting in that argument is this...... Swarovski had a binocular called the SLC HD. It wore green armoring with some black accents, and was considered to be one of the finest hunting binoculars available, and I was one of them. A couple of years ago now (I forget exactly)Swaro redesigned this binocular and called it just an SLC, with the exact same optics (still HD), redesigned armoring, a touch lighter, and some tweaks to the focus mechanism. All these improvements resulted in a price drop of several hundred $$$$$.

Nobody here at the 'fire had a word to say about that, that I'm aware of. I guess since it still wore a silver hawk emblem and had SWAROVSKI printed on the body, nobody wanted to second guess that. BTW, it is still one of the finest hunting binocs you can buy.

They did the same thing with the ATS/STS spotting scope line, but I didn't follow the prices at the time they dropped the designated HD version.

Just a guess, but it's possible in both cases that the mfg found ways to simplify the designs (for example, redesigning internal parts to make them less expensive to produce or reducing part count) while not adversely affecting performance and/or improved efficiency in the manufacturing process, and passed on the cost savings to the consumer. For example, if a company offers fewer options, that reduces cost by reducing the number of process setups and allows larger production lot sizes between production change-over. This amortizes production costs over a greater number of units and reduces non-production setup time that costs money. If mechanical components are designed in such a way that it eliminates production operations, the part can be just as good functionally, but less expensive to make. Or, maybe they outsourced production of components to lower cost suppliers? Sometimes just rearranging the production line to reduce material handling and non-value add part move time/staging to improve efficiency can reduce cost without having any effect on the product.

Competition has a way of forcing companies to find ways to reduce production costs.

Yup.

I'd own the SLC over the new "Swarovision" bins. The "new" SLC is likely the best buy in the world of 42mm binoculars.

IIRC, the tweaks to the focusing were the cost saving.

But then, I've been imbibing some, celebrating the Broncs...

Kraky111: I have NO idea at all what YOU are LOL'ing about?
And I would venture an opinion that YOU don't either!
Sheesh - Leupold "bashing" has reached another unsubstantiated/unfounded LOW!
Double sheesh.
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy

Market dynamics determine price points, not what it costs to make them. The market is flooded with good scopes that were better values than the leupold VX3 line and leupold was losing sales, hence the price drop.

Don't overthink it. Companies price their products based upon what the market will bear, manufacturing costs have a lot less to do with it.

In a way, they also did it to themselves with the various levels of scopes. People wait to find the next level up on sale at a price close to the lower level. AKA: VX-1, VX-2, etc. And, many people feel the VX-2 are good enough for their needs without going up to the next level. At the other end, the VX-6 market is taking away from the VX-3 market somewhat, for those considering a higher priced scope. I'm a little surprised they are keeping the Rifleman line, with a price not much less than the VX-1 line.

This costs come into play once they lose margins/share. Then they'll try to cut costs, but by that point, it is to maintain margins; not to affect prices.

Grinning, I just watched that video. It is a bit over the top...but hey, it's from the marketing department, not R&D...:)

I do believe in monsters...like Hillary.