I have a 1995 vintage Kowa TSN1 that served me well for years. The Kowa cost about $550 back in the day and it does not have fluorite lens elements and is only multicoated, not fully-multicoated. However it served me well for years and the LER 45* eyepiece made shooting prone a pleasure. The model was really the standard in the HP community in the late 80s and 90s. However I'm going to be in need to two spotting scopes in the next couple of years so I picked up a new spotter. My wallet couldn't take a new Kowa or Vortex and Leica and Swarovski or other super premium scopes are not even in consideration.

I found one that wont kill my wallet, the new Celestron Regal M2 80ED with 27X LER eyepiece. The scope body and eyepiece are dry nitrogen filled, It's an APO design (three element objective), has ED glass elements of some kind, probably Chinese. I'm sure if it was Schott or Ohara FPL53 they would advertise it as such, but they have applied the StarBrightXLT coatings that Celestron uses in their premium astronomical telescopes.The The APO design, and ED glass helps reduce the refraction of each color of light, and helps it come to focus at the same location. The reduced chromatic aberration improves the image dramatically.  



I had both of the scopes set up side-by-side yesterday and the Celestron blew the Kowa out of the water. The great thing is the Celestron was only $650 and the LER eyepiece is fantastic with a stunning 32mm of eyereleif. If you have any astronomy eyepieces, the Celestron will take the standard 1.25" barrel. Based on the focal length of the scope and the stated magnification of 27X, the eyepiece has a focal length of about 16mm.  

They throw in a decent $100 tripod with a fluid head for free if you order during their promotion. Not useful for HP, but it will probably get some use for astronomy or videos.

B

Does my TSN-1 qualify as vintage now?  Sweet.