Why would you put your scope in the freezer? Does that keep them fresh?
I'm old enough to remember when we had to leave our scoped rifles outside the tent/cabin so they wouldn't fog up in the morning. They weren't sealed nor fog proof.
We have another term: Cheap. Did the guy writing the article put a price range on cheap? If I was having scopes sent to me free so I would write nice things about them, cheap might not mean the same thing as if I was going without lunch in order to buy a scope. At $100, I could buy a new scope every couple of years for a looong time before I came up with the price of one that had a little bavarian sweat rubbed on it. And the question begs to be asked: would the eurotrash scope be 16 times better than my asian scope? I could even afford to buy a back up, mount it in quick release mounts, sight it in, and carry it in my pack as a back up.
I know a fellow that spent all of his money getting his bench rig set up and didn't have any money left over for a "real" scope. He shoots bench rest with a 36x BSA. The cross hairs are kinda coarse for bench shooting but he don't do bad. Especially considering he is competing against scopes in the $1500+ bracket.
I think a fellow can get a fine hunting scope now for a couple of hundred bucks. Especially if he avoids those "men in black" looking things with the big diameters and the high mounts. And the whistles and bells and lights and all sorts of little dots inside. If he opts for a fixed power of say 4x, I think he could get a nice clear scope for even less.
This past fall, a young man brought over his rifle and a scope he had picked up in a trade. It was a
Tasco with most of the paint off of it. He wanted me to mount it on his rifle which I did. We took it out to the shooting bench and the adjustments on that scope were as true as any I've tried. It would shoot an honest to goodness box. About 1.5" was about the best the guy's rifle could do but when I clicked back over to the starting point, it laid the shots right on top of the starters.
I think the quality bar has been raised considerably in scopes. Especially in the optics themselves. So what a fellow has to look for is how the scope is put together.