Looking for a new scope for an AR build and got to realizing that a low power affordable fixed might be an answer. Very few exist on the market now, variables are the rage and they are getting too far up the scale - this is a deer rifle in broken woodland, not antelope.

Enter search terms, read up on "Best of 202x most recommended paid opinions first" and nooooooo, you get 6-10 different optics with the first character "2" and after that it's a collection of brainless stupidity. Amazon? Same stupid search results. Ebay - same. Google? Same. You will find the very few repeatedly buried in a massive collection of 2, 3, 4, 5 and up Minute of Angle Red, Green, Blue, Purple, or LGBqurstuvwxyz rainbow dots. Not 2x - two power magnification. You know, between 1.5 and 3. 2. Two. Dos.

Then you get to customer reviews . . .

Do we know what field of view means? Got a 30mm red dot? A 42mm 2x has a similar FOV - it's not going to be Panavision wide screen. And having an unlimited focal distance is a plus, ok? Not getting scope brow (that cute frowny where after you heal up you have three eyebrows and people ask "Do you fence at the academy in Munich?" Eye relief is good. Scars from here to Munich belong on a Prussian wearing riding boots. (You do know where those boots came from, right? The army was horse based. Not from some bootmaker named Jack in Munich.)

It's all so tiresome.

Anyway, cheap scope incoming despite the entire internet trying to wave me off for my own good.

I get it and understand what you're going through.
Kinda went on a spree yesterday and besides a new pistol and ammunition, I also bought an optic.
Way to much to chose from with prices around $200 for some red dots to a few thousand for top of the line variable power.
At the end of my spree, I opted for a Vortex Spitfire HD Gen 2 3x prism. I'm happy, I like it and it didn't break the bank. Also nice that my LGS lets me look at the scopes/red dots and make my own decisions.

Aren't you supposed to just ask SF what to buy?

My choices tend to run down a list of needed features and then to search for the item as specified.

The common approach is to read what all the cool kids are carrying this week, buy it, discover it doesn't really fit the task at hand, live with it or then sell it in the forums losing money.

Those of us living on a more frugal basis tend to do the work up front, buy once and cry once is cheaper in the long run.

I just needed 2X with an illuminated dot. A lit up reticle would do, too. Market is all about $400 multi power variables with a rainbow of dots and don't forget 5 rails attached all over it. It goes to the old rule about making what will sell, not what we need.

Too many buy based on what is popular this week, not what fits the task at hand with actual specifications.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say the OP got the results he did because the folks who wrote the search algorithm are using a fuzzy search, something that makes a lot of sense if you think about it.

https://whatis.techtarget.com/...esired%20information.

A fuzzy search is a process that locates Web pages that are likely to be relevant to a search argument even when the argument does not exactly correspond to the desired information. A fuzzy search is done by means of a fuzzy matching program, which returns a list of results based on likely relevance even though search argument words and spellings may not exactly match. Exact and highly relevant matches appear near the top of the list. Subjective relevance ratings, usually as percentages, may be given.

A fuzzy matching program can operate like a spell checker and spelling-error corrector. For example, if a user types "Misissippi" into Yahoo or Google (both of which use fuzzy matching), a list of hits is returned along with the question, "Did you mean Mississippi?" Alternative spellings, and words that sound the same but are spelled differently, are given. A fuzzy matching program can compensate for common input typing errors, as well as errors introduced by optical character recognition ( OCR ) scanning of printed documents. The program can return hits with content that contains a specified base word along with prefixes and suffixes. For example, if "planet" is entered as a search word, hits occur for sites containing words such as "protoplanet" or "planetary." The program can also find synonyms and related terms, working like an online thesaurus or encyclopedic cross-reference tool. In the Ask Jeeves search engine, if the word "galaxy" is entered, hits are returned such as "Galaxy Photography," "Milky Way," and "The Nine Planets Solar System Tour."

Fuzzy matching programs usually return irrelevant hits as well as relevant ones. Superfluous results are likely to occur for terms with multiple meanings, only one of which is the meaning the user intends. If the user has only a vague or general idea of the topic, or does not know exactly what to look for, the ratio of relevant hits to irrelevant hits tends to be low. (The ratio is even lower, however, when an exact matching program is used in this situation.)

Fuzzy searching is much more powerful than exact searching when used for research and investigation. Fuzzy searching is especially useful when researching unfamiliar, foreign-language, or sophisticated terms, the proper spellings of which are not widely known. Fuzzy searching can also be used to locate individuals based on incomplete or partially inaccurate identifying information.

What you need to be looking for is a Handgun scope. I have a 2X Nikon (actual magnification is 1.75X per the manual) I've used it on my Ruger Scout Rifle and it's an excellent scope for targets at 50-100 yards and workable up to 200 yards if you don't mind minute of Deer accuracy. BTW, I also have a variable power Nikon Handgun scope that does up to 7X but the eye relief changes with the magnification and the sharpness is not impressive.

Fact is that little 2X is the bees knees for a Scout Rifle, light, sharp as a tack and a LOT of range for the eye relief.