Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Optics Vortex scopes

I am aware that they make different models with different quality features at different prices. What I want to know is which is the bottom dollar model that you trust as far as tracking and durability goes????? Like a super sniper from SWFA as an example

Thanks

I've had 3 of the Vipers and 2 Razors, a gen I 5-20 and a gen II 4.5-27. My Gen 2 Razor has been great so far but all others, including the Gen I Razor, have been returned for service and/or sold for issues of some sort. Not a good track record in my book.

I think the Gen 2 Razors are a decent scope if you can get them under $2K but I won't be buying any Vipers in the future unless Vortex does something with their QC and testing.

None of them are trustworthy sans the Razor line.

That's been my experience

I can’t speak as an owner, only a perspective buyer. I am in the market for a high end scope. I have ruled out Vortex. My concerns are growing quality issues and direction of the company into a big corporate model; that they are moving away from the small business model that keeps them close to their customers.

Here is a letter from Vortex---- taken from another web site about complaints etc.. "A no risk experience"






Hi everyone, this is Dave and Vortex and I’d like to weigh in here.
First, I’d like to say that the people at Vortex are absolutely committed to giving the best product and the best service in the world to our customers. Many of our employees, including myself, have been in combat in Afghanistan and Iraq and know firsthand the importance of equipment that has the best reliability as humanly possible. With that said there never has been a perfect product ever made, and there never will be. We could literally fail every product ever made by any brand, if we looked hard enough. Every single product ever made, previous, now, and in the future, will fail under the right conditions or given enough use. I learned that first hand in critical combat situations. I had to adapt to the situation and make the mission happen.
So, what we do for you is strive to make our products the best they possibly can be and we give the best customer service, not because we put junk in a box, but because it’s the right thing to do. This is not a movie, it’s real life, and if we had the warranty we did with junk in a box we literally would not be able to stay in business (in real life). In addition, there are more examples than I can count where the customer damaged the scope and we will literally replace it with no questions asked (and without making you feel stupid...I've broken things due to my own fault too). Some examples:
Dropping product off a huge cliff – replaced no questions asked
Leaving a brand new purchased PST in the box on tailgate as customer drives away and it falls off in an intersection and is run over for about an hour. Scope crushed. – replaced no questions asked.
Customer torqued rings using FOOT pounds torque wrench, crushing scope tube. Scope replaced no questions asked.
Basically, if you buy a Vortex product you will have a product to use for the rest of your life no matter what.
We do this because we genuinely care about our customers and want them to have the absolute best experience possible in an imperfect world. Looking at how many scopes we have sold (and we sell as many or more than any other brand) our failure rate is far below 1%. Are some of the scopes never sent back? Sure! Are some scopes sitting in safes most of their existence? Sure! However, we still see very little failures and have other evidence that our failure rate is way below 1%. We have a huge amount of people that use our products, regularly, and successfully with no problems. When you have a ton of scopes out there the percentage can still be small but the number can be relatively high. In the day-in-age of the internet everything gets reported and can seem like a big number. People tend to report the negative and never the positive.

We do occasionally have customers with repeat problems. So, what’s that all about? On the clear majority of occasions such as these (which are actually quite small) we have found there is something very unique going on with the customer’s situation. This is not to bash the customer or say it’s their fault, at all. Scopes, rifles, other shooting equipment, and shooting in general are quite complicated and there are countless variables that can contribute to a problem (more variables than any brand or engineering group can account for if they are being honest). Most of the time in these situations we find something like one of the following:
Customer lapped their quality rings
Customer used vertically split rings
Customer over-torqued rings (yes, sometimes they use a FOOT pounds torque wrench or no torque wrench at all). I’ve been that guy that doesn’t have a wrench and I think my Mark 1 torque fingers are highly calibrated to make it happen….and then I screw it up (covered by our warranty! And we won’t make you feel stupid for doing it because we have been that guy too)
It could even be a very unique rifle, caliber, mount, scope combo that is causing a very unique and specific resonance frequency causing a problem with the scope. Again, there are countess variables and there are bound to be strange situations that will pop up.
So, what can we do for you in these situations? First, we never give the customer a hard time. If this is you in this thread, call us up! Put us to the challenge to help you out! We have actual human beings, in a menu tree 1 button deep (most of which are huge shooting enthusiasts themselves) to answer the phone and help you out by walking you through your situation. Our people will not belittle you or your situation. I’ve probably done more dumb things than you, anyway. Like I said, shooting can be complicated and we know that, so we will graciously do whatever we can to help you.
We have a FFL. We often have a customer send us their rifle and we mount their scope (a new one if needed). Then we will go out and shoot that setup for you and send you the target. After this we will send the rifle and scope back (all mounted up) and walk you through anything we learned along the way to get you up and shooting. We do this quite often actually and this is a great way we can often find the issue with the setup that is causing the problem.
If this doesn’t solve the problem, we have upgraded customers to a different product for no additional cost.
If this doesn’t work (which rarely happens) we will refund your money.
We literally offer a no risk experience.
We aren’t magicians so we can’t give you your time back, but we will do everything we can, short of sorcery, to make you happy. I have even bought ammo for a customer before to replace what they used up.
The bottom line here is that we will go out of our way to make sure you are happy with your product and are able to operate the way you need to. This is not a warranty on a box. Again, this is not a movie, it’s real life and bad things can and do happen. We do everything we can to make the experience better.
I’ll also point out that what we learn over time we constantly apply to make products better. I believe the product that started this thread was a Viper HS and the OP also referred to the Gen 1 PST. Our current Gen II PST is a big leap in performance and quality over the Gen 1 PST (which is an almost 10-year-old product).
Lastly, to the OP, give us a call and let us help you out. We live in an imperfect world and no product will ever be perfect. Eventually, with enough use, every product can and will fail (any brand, and type of product…not just shooting products). However, we will do everything we can to get you where you want to be. If there is something unique with your situation we will see if we can walk you through it and get your product working for you. Thank you

Dave

The Vortex scopes that I owned and used are mediocre at best. Also their scopes seem big and heavy and expensive, which is fine if the glass is good. Because the glass is not good to my eyes, I don't even look at Vortex scopes anymore.

That letter from Dave at Vortex is interesting. Two things caught my eye.
#1. Lapping quality rings?
#2 Vertically split rings?

I did not realize these two things are a problem? and cant wrap my mind around how they could cause issue's?

Vertically split rings do not provide consistent pressure around the tube- they “pinch” it.

Yeah, I use a lot of Warne rings, which are vertically split, and they haven’t yet caused any issues with my scopes, which are mostly Leupold. Should I be concerned? Or is it only a problem if you use vertically split rings with Vortex scopes?

But the name sounds cool to the younger crowd- they can spit out fancy sentences like "I'm running a Vortex Razor Generation 14 on my 338 Edge with 210 TTSX's"

I've always preferred quiet competence, aka Leupold.

Quality rings are already "lapped", and there are a lot of high quality stuff not mentioned in this forum, seen on high dollar long range precision which is where Vortex "started" Spuhr, Adamount, American Rifle Company.

Vertical Split rings are usually not a problem in set ups that are zeroed and left, but a lot of problems are being reported in tracking errors and non-zero returns in long range precision shooting.
some explanations are directed towards the scopes being designed to take stress at the sides, other explanations with the location of the springs. others with tops being tightened before bottoms.
this problem is recorded pretty well on other web sights.

Vortex initially got started by marketing to a specialized group in the high dollar group at the same time Premier and USO were really getting going. Most scopes in this group have glass for resolution rather than color spectrum balance. and they are/were built like truck, NF, etc. and heavy to take the abuse of long range precision type shooting. In this respect they are no different than Leopold, whose top of the line scopes are really good, and then not so much.

When Nikon set up shop in the Philllipines ,and others went to China, I suppose Vortex had to also be price competitive with the new stuff, Althon Primary.

You pay for what you get, and personally I think the Optics industry has improved light years from 10-15 years ago.

Got a lot of old scopes I kept just for fun
original 4x weaver
Burris - put the animal between the lines with mag. ring and it moves the horizontal to the holdover (like some of the new Redfields)
Burris varmint with adjustable Iris
weaver 8x56 German cross hair
couple of

What ever "names" they choose is fine with me as long as they carry on the spirit of the shooting sports.

Frankly, glad to see that much excitement,

Not singular to Vortex.

I think it will mostly depend on how thick the scope tube is, how well the rings and receiver holes are aligned,and if they are properly torqued,as to if you will have a problem or not. They do however pinch more than other designs and I've seen some high dollar scopes with creased and crinkled tubes from using them.

Even if they don't damage the tube they can be putting stress on the erector system and cause inconsistent adjustment. Though you can do that with any rings that are out of alignment or improperly torqued.



To the original question,I've not yet decided to trust any Vortex. Even though the Razor may be solid.I would still buy a Nightforce or possibly a couple others as a first choice.

I did try their Razor in their HD LH 1.5-8X32,which is a light weight hunter scope. Glass is excellent but even though it seems to work adjustments are so mushy it's difficult to even discern a click,and that's on a $700 scope.

to answer your question none of them. They are marketing company. most of their stuff is chinese or Philippine manufacture. I bought a brand new PST 2 and it showed 3/4 MOA of reticle shift at 20 MOA of up elevation. I returned the scope and got another brand new one and the second scope did the same thing, EXACTLY. why wasn't this caught at the factory? the truth is they aren't being checked. If you want it checked I supposed it will cost you double the money with a nightforce. which I did end up buying another of and ran the same test and it tracked 100%

the reason some have great luck with vortex is frankly most people don't shoot all that much, this is in despite of what they may claim. It also depends on what you do with the scope. if you set it and forget it, there are plenty of optics that can handle that. crank knobs better spend the big bucks.

the other issue I have with vortex is brand management. you go spend $100's on their optics then they change the model 2 years later and your resale is horrible. I guess who wants to spend money on chinese made junk? if you want decent scopes they need to be europe or japan manufacture.

The Razor G1 (made in JAPAN) I had was used for thousands of rounds fired, most of them dialed. Worked flawlessly. But it was an MOA scope, and my last one at that, so it was traded and replaced with a DMRII. Frankly, I miss the Razor.

I think that is the only scope they had made in japan. even those some guys claimed had issues over on snipershide, that was way too much scope for me. nearly 3 pounds is one truck axle of a scope. surprised you don't like the DMR better. vortex though you got to hand it to them they had good timing and one hell of a business plan. bushnell was being horse traded and run into the ground by private equity buyouts. they pretty much replaced all the space bushnell had in retail stores. They have also managed to take customer service and turn problems into fans of the brand. They got people wearing vortex hats in stores and convinced the guys behind the counter to pimp their products.

I don't have an opinion either way, but I thought this was interesting. Vortex has the highest usage among the pro shooters in Precision Rifle Series.

http://precisionrifleblog.com/2017/03/03/long-range-scopes-pros-use/

Main reason why "old" scopes have such a good reputation is, there was no internet back then

lots of Vortexs been put out there in the last 10 years,