Optically good, but some flaws - Hawke Sport Optics Endurance ED Compact 15-45x60mm Spotting Scope

This is an odd spotting scope to review. I was very impressed with the optical quality of the scope, which compared surprisingly favorably to a much more expensive Kowa TSN-553 Prominar that I also bought for birding and wildlife watching. I had hoped that the Endurance would be close enough to the Kowa that I could save a bunch of money and keep the Hawke. The Kowa beat the Hawke in a few primary areas during my fairly brief testing. The Kowa revealed a little more detail in dark areas in otherwise good light. The Kowa handled backlighting much better. The Hawke also exhibited a little bit of chromatic aberration under some (but few) circumstances.

If it came down to just the optical quality, I would have kept the Hawke based on the significantly lower price. But . . . There were issues beyond the surprisingly minor differences in image quality. The first issue doesn't sound like a big deal, but the view-through case doesn't fit very well, to the point where the opening for the focus knob was not in the right place and the knob was half covered by the case. This is really annoying and kind of like an amateur hour type manufacturing flaw. The bigger issue, and the main reason I returned the Hawke, is that when turning the eyepiece to zoom, the eyepiece could continue to be turned beyond the stop for the end of the zoom range. I found this lack of quality to be concerning enough that I decided to return the Hawke and keep the Kowa. Even though the Hawke has a lifetime replacement warranty if it breaks, I will sometimes be using the scope internationally on trips where, if the scope were to break, I would have no chance of finding a replacement. I trust the much better built Kowa to not fail me when I want it most. I'm also the kind of person willing to pay more for something that is going to last instead of something disposable, because I think those things are wasteful.