Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Optics Vortex, now all made in China.

How many posts like this before I put him on "ignore"? Let's give him a few. Maybe he's been drinking.

I don't consider it an insult when it's the truth. When you said, "China or Japan ... almost no difference", you revealed your lack of knowledge.

Sorry, just because you know that soybeans never recover from a setback, does not prove you know anything about optics...

You can save your lessons for those with even fewer optics clues than yourself (hardly a target-rich environment)...

And you just showed your ass...

Specify what you want at a particular pricepoint in either and see what happens...

Things are different today from just a couple years ago.

The.Kowa 883 is a top notch spotter infact, after comparison I Sold my Swarovski and keep the Kowa. David Tubbs use Kowa spotters.

Say it ain't so!

It's definitely so!

First of all, when I'm talking China or Japan almost no difference, I'm talking hunting optics and Nikon or Canon photo gear is something completely unrelated.

99% of the hunting optics made in Asia are low(er) quality products targeting the mass market and that one small boutique shop in Japan makes one decent product does not make them an optics experts. "one swallow does not a summer make"

After all, Kowa products are not even available at any local retailer (Idaho) and if Kowa (or March) was the chit, I'm sure at least Cabelas would carry it. Heck, Kowa doesn't even make or sell rifle scopes anymore. Didn't they use to make some cheap scopes? Well, maybe they stopped making them because they were junk.

So comparing Kowa, March etc to Zeiss, Swaro etc is like comparing Toyota & Porsche.

Is that why more high power rifle shooters use Kowa spotters than other brands. The Kowa 883 is as good as it gets.

ShakyHands,



Give me a break! I bought a Zeiss 5-25X50 the other day. It was not as good as my Bushnell 6500 4 1/2-30X50 in bright light. In the low light test it punked out twelve minutes before the Bushnell! Don't try to convince me about the quality of Swarovski. I bought four z5 5-25X52s. None, and I can't say it loudly enough, NONE had glass as good as my Bushnell 6500 4 1/2-30X50. That is with four different guys comparing them.

Have you had a March or a Kowa? Why would you compare a Toyota to a Porsche? One is a sedan and pickup and the other is a sports car.

You are the only [bleep] person on the face of the plant that says Bushnell glass is better than Swarovski.

As for the Zeiss, its japanese glass and not schott.

BTW Dipschitt, toyota makes sports cars and porsche also makes sedans..

The Kowa is a great spotter, but in my experience most lr shooter are either using the Night Force (rebranded meopta) or the STR which both have ranging reticles.

As for the rest of this debate, the Japanese do make some good optics. The problem is name recognition, its hard to buy a Kowa or a 2k set of nikons when you can actually buy Alpha glass for that money.

I've never looked through a set of tracts, but the other japanese/asian glass I've used as a general rule is no where as good as the top end stuff from leica, swaro. or zeiss. (that being said, I'm not a fan of a lot of the new zeiss. The HT's are good, but the new SF's are meh)

While Porsche does not make trucks, Porsche makes sedans and SUVs, just like Toyota.

To wrap it up, if you were to compare German glass to Japanese glass at the same price range, Germany would still win 99% so the only reason to buy Asian products is to save money while giving away some quality and the 1% of the population would buy some small boutique manufacturer items such as the Kowa spotting scope.

So go ahead and keep driving your Asian vehicles while I stick to my German cars.

Porsche sedan



Porsche SUV

There's a lot of truth in this, IMO, especially the consumer respect issue. After owning a Nikon 82ED, Kowa 884, and briefly a Zeiss 85FL T spotter, I've landed with the Meopta S2. I think it's the finest thing on the planet with the exception of the Swaro modulars, but I find $4000+ for this setup is ridiculous. That being said, the Kowa 883/884 gives up very, very little to either one, once again IMO.

The highest end Z,L, and Swaro binoculars are probably the best binoculars made, but you have to include the very Japanese Nikon EDG. It gives up nothing to any of them, but with Nikon's terrible marketing efforts, and borderline CS, I won't own one. Then again, with Leica's well earned schitty CS practices and pathetic warranties, I won't own one of them either. That's a shame because the old 10x42 Trinovid BA was probably my favorite binocular ever. As you and everyone else knows by now, Z and L both "make" some of the optics in Portugal, Japan, and even China nowadays. There are also Schott glass facilities in China if I'm not mistaken. If I were to put my Meopta 10x42 HD's, Swaro 10x50 SV's, Gold Ring HD's, and Toric UHD's on tripods, side by side in the field, I would not be able to see a big muley buck for instance, through one without being able to easily see it through any of the others. You can add the Vortex Razor HD and Conquest HD in there too.

While I may prefer the SV (it's my pick of the litter), the differences are "picking nits" nowadays.

It is a matter of preference, I picked the Kowa and sold my Swarovski. I'd never heard of Kowa until I was Read David Tubbs and that is what he was useing.

What are you smoking? The Bushnell 6500 4 1/2-30X50 goes for less than $900. The cheapest I paid for one of the four Swarovski z5 5-25-50 was $1,350. The most was $1,575. The Zeiss was $1,100 on closeout. You don't know what you're talking about.

The SV's are my favorites by far.

I'd disagree on putting the Razors or the Conquests in the same class as the others listed, The razors IMHO have the worst pin cushioning/Distrotion on the edges I've seen in almost any model. I don't like the conquest glass at all.

I had the gold rings for a couple years, they did very well except for light transmission and low light.

No argument here. I'm not real "bird watcher picky", if you know what I mean. Looks like we agree 100% on the SV's and S2 though.

Kowa TSN-883 Spotting Scope

Kowa TSN-883 Spotting ScopeThe TSN-880 series is the larger of the two newest scope lines from Kowa. We've reviewed scopes before. We've reviewed Kowa scopes before. We've never seen anything like this scope before! We received the angled fluorite model TSN-883 ("Prominar", for those of you familiar with Kowa terminology) for review from Kowa along with the TSN-773. These are 88- and 77-mm objective lens size scopes respectively. The TSN-773 will be reviewed in another article. First impressions mean a lot in this game, and the new TSN-883 makes a big one - the view through this optic is breath-taking and unbelievably bright and crisp. In short, we really liked it.

Physically, the TSN-883 is a very compact 13.5 inches long (without eyepiece) and weighs in at just over 3 lbs (53.6 oz.). For an objective this size, that weight is impressive - it's actually lighter than some 77-to-82-mm scopes on the market, thanks to its magnesium alloy casing. The body is fully sealed, nitrogen-purged and completely waterproof. So are the eyepieces! The eyepieces lock in place, with a push-button release mechanism. The lens hood pulls straight out, and as always, we recommend using it, if only to protect the objective lens from potential damage by scratching or whatever. Beyond a shallow double groove on the hood, the TSN-883 has no device to enable sighting.

When we reviewed the new Kowa scopes, we pulled out the best instruments from other manufacturers that we had in stock. While we won't tell you what the competitor models were (we still have friends at those companies…), we will say right out that the 883 and 773 blew away everything else in their class. By that we mean, these are simply the finest spotting scopes we’ve seen yet. It was a revelation in the field. The degree of detail visible was simply astounding with characteristics of feather wear so clear you would think you were staring at a museum specimen. The image brightness and clarity were riveting. We tried hard to find things wrong with these scopes, and it was really difficult to do. The image stays razor sharp right to the very edge of the field. There is no zone of blurriness, no distortion, no image-bending - nothing. We did note that at the very edge of the field on a bright, high contrast object, there was the slightest hint of color-fringing. So what? The effect is very minor, and very difficult to detect unless you’re looking specifically for it. It’s unlikely to affect a user in any way. Like we said, we had to work hard for this! The colors were absolutely true with no detectable bias. In failing light, the image was remarkably bright at 60x, delivering detail that wasn't even visible in other high end scope models we compared it to. The image quality is so high that it is difficult to write about without sounding like we're gushing.


The rest of the review can be found here, http://www.optics4birding.com/kowa-tsn-883-spotting-scope-review.aspx

I'm not either, but I do like my glass to be clear from edge to edge, CA controlled, and colors to be right.