With the nicer weather, I had a chance to take this scope out and test it. I was awfully lucky and won this spotter in last month's CameraLand monthly raffle.

I have two other spotting scopes that I used to compare it to. Neither is really in the same class, but it gave me some basis for comparison nonetheless. One is an 18-36 x 50mm Bushnell spotter. I don't remember the model number (and it's not marked), but this unit was made in Korea and was about $100 15 years ago. The othe is a 20-80 x 80mm Cabelas Alpha spotter made in China bought about 4 years ago. It was about $300 IIRC.

First impressions of the Zeiss as I pulled it out of the package were that it felt tough. It has great grooved rubber armoring, very similar to the Zeiss binoculars of the 80's and 90's with the same Dialyt name that in 7x42 were the reference standard for the binocular experts over at Better View Desired. Despite the armor and the sturdy feel, the scope only weighs 42.15 oz. And it's not bulky or awkward to handle.

I mention this, because Zeiss indicates in their literature that the scope was designed to be used in the field with or without a tripod.
Also, the eyepiece was included, and was integral. It's straight vs angled. This is what I personally prefer and makes it more suitable for quick field use. The magnification knob is on the front of the eyepiece. The focus knob is the barrel of the scope attached to the objective lens. This is a little different, too. But it makes it easy pick up and quickly focus while using off-hand. Or really while bracing it against a tree, or your window frame, etc. I did find that I could hold steady enough, especially at 18x magnification, to follow birds hopping around in my back yard.

My neighbor has bird feeders in his yard, so I focused in on birds at a lasered 82 yards. I could hold on the feeder and make out the eyes and other features on the cardinals at his feeder.

Despite Zeiss's design adaptations for hand-held use, the scope does have a drilled and tapped block on the bottom for attachment to a standard tripod. So I put my target frame, with .22 and .30 caliber holes in both black and white target paper at 100 yards in the sunlight. And I attached the Zeiss Dialyt to my tripod. I was able to get to almost full magnification without distortion of the image. 40x power was still very clear. I could easily make out .22 holes in the black part of the target paper.

What about the Bushnell and the Cabelas scopes? The Bushnell has a very clear image, but I needed to stay almost at minimum magnification for the best image and resolution. I couldn't make out all of the bullet holes in the black, though I could make out some of the clusters of 22 holes in the black. Holes in the white were clear. The 80mm Cabelas scope had best image quality at about 35X power. I could make out about the same level of detail with the 80mm scope as I could with the 65mm Zeiss, though the image has a yellowish cast that hid smaller details like the small wrinkle in the paper and some scratches on the paper. I was sort of amazed. I bought the Cabelas scope largely figuring that any 80mm scope would outperform even the best 65mm scope. Certainly the Zeiss view was cleaner, but I could also actually make out some details that weren't visible through the larger scope. I plan to try this test again, just because I am not sure I believe that it's possible to see more detail, even with significanly better glass, if you're comparing an 80mm objective lens with a 65mm lens.

So next, I moved the target frame back into the shade of the house, then took the Zeiss out to the edge of the woods behind my house to look from 100 yards. I had to reduce the magnification slightly to keep best image quality, but the .22 holes, even in the black, were easy to make out. Unfortunately, I ran out of time and wasn't able to do the same with the other scopes for comparison. May try that another day.

I was really impressed by how clear the view is, and how good the resolution is. I noticed no flare looking into the sun, either. The resolution also didn't fade outside the center of the view (this was not the case with the Alpha socpe; the Bushnell was actually pretty good to near the edge). More to follow...