Thoughts on all these scopes adding illuminated reticles? Even seeing them on Sig Whiskey scopes and Burris scopes that only price around $200. Sure Leupold and Swaro's have it down. But hesitant about illuminated features on budget scopes. Any experience?

The only cheaper scope I’ve saw with one that’s somewhat useable was on a Burris FF E1. Same principal as the Leupold firedot but the dot is bigger and will not go as low. Good daylight and low light use. Too dang bright in the dark.

I’ve got various scopes with illuminated dot’s, illuminated crosshairs, and partially illuminated crosshairs. I have a strong preference for the illuminated dot. It washes out less of what you are attempting to shoot. The Leupold dot has a good range between bright and ‘can hardly see it’.

The most recent scope I have is an Athlon Midas, which has the center part of the crosshairs eliminated. I suppose that’s so you can utilize some of the MOA lines, though why would I need those lines illuminated if I’m shooting in dim light and can’t see at distance. But, in fairness, I haven’t used that Athlon scope in dim light yet.

I can definitely say that Leupold got that dot illumination perzactly right. I don’t know how you could improve on that.

And I should add that even expensive scopes can have poor or useless reticle illumination - the Vortex Viper PST gen 1 scopes for instance.

If you haven’t had or used an illuminated reticle scope, and if you are shopping for one, I’d take the scope in a dark room and put the illumination on the minimum setting. If you can barely see it, that’s good. You can go up from there in brightness if you wish.

I have two Burris scopes with illumination; normally I keep them off but it's nice to have it available and the Burris scopes have the feature where you can turn it off between each brightness setting. Also on the RT-6 at 1x, you can use it roughly as a red dot if need be.

I have the Burris FF II E1 with the ballistic reticle. I've actually hunted with it at night and IMO it's really good on the lower settings. I think the lowest 3 settings are pretty soft, with 1 being just a hair above 'off'. It rides my 6.8 AR and for the money you won't get anything else close. Would buy again.

My vision is not what it used to be and getting worse as I get older. The fine crosshairs in my Leupolds were causing some accuracy problems for me in low light. I replaced them with Burris 30mm tube LRS scopes using German 3P#4 Illuminated Reticles. Best scope change I ever made. I use one on a smokeless muzzleloader too. I have not had any problems with them.

I bought my first two illuminated dot scopes in the last year. VX5-HD with Firedot and an Accupoint. Holy cow! Wish I had done it years earlier. It may be mind tricks, but seems like the illuminated dot helps me focus in better on the spot I want to shoot. Haven’t looked through any of the scopes the OP mentions, but it they are anything like Leupold and Trijicon, it’s worth the extra.

I have those scopes, without the firedot. They're great. I think I know now why the retailer had it priced so low, everyone wants the firedot and now so do I. Everyone raves about them.

I have 3 Leopold with Firedots. Love them.

Like you I like the dot but on FFP scopes there is an advantage to having the entire reticle illuminated when the scope is on the lowest magnification. Some reticles can be hard to see on low magnification and illumination helps.

The Trijicon Accupoint is the gold standard in illuminated reticle scopes, but I've also had good luck with the following less expensive scopes:

Leupold VXR and Freedom
Sig Whiskey 3 (VERY good value for $s)
GPO Passion 3X

The new production Burris and Bushnell are China, so I'll pass !!!

I’ll praise the Athlon Midas again. Last evening, I was shocked to find a big sounder of pigs at my yard feeder. That’s pretty rare, but there they were. The bigger ones were ‘hogging’ the corn, and they were solid black. I snuck out to the barn, got the AR and snuck back to the corner of the house. Pretty dark by then, and I didn’t see any hogs, but raised the rifle anyway, with the illumination on. And there they were. With the illumination on lowest, I plunked a few rounds into the big one. Without illumination, the shot would not have happened. I like that scope. Not too expensive and works great.

Probably wouldn’t hurt to upgrade the 223 to a Grendel, SPC, or 300 Hammer.

I have a 2.5-10x accupoint and it is by far my best low light scope with its illumination being a very big reason why. I don't own too many but my 5-20 swfa and 8-32 sightron have illumination but I almost never use them cause i rarely need them. However, the sightron one is not good. the reticle is so thin that illumination hardly helps.

Watch for bleed over around the edge of the lens when going to brighter settings. At a low setting, shouldn’t be an issue.

Batteries in scopes always fail me when I need them most. The Trijicon Accupoint works every time.

Yet another AccuPoint fan here.

Turn it off between settings? I used to think that was a dumb thing. Actually... it is when in a fully lit room. But out in the field when it's dark it's a nice hands off way of bringing the illumination up and have it close to where you want it. When hunting hogs at night I appreciate very dim illumination so it does not wash out the target.