The trijicon is noticeably brighter than the vx3. Seems to hold groups well. The illuminated dot is not overly bright, infact it could be brighter. I started the test by tossing the rifle and scope on my hardwood floor from 3 or 4 feet, no padding. No ill effects.
I was having some a problem with something, after shooting a few rounds I have a hard time with the scopes turning blurry, this one was not so bad but the pst gen2 5x25 was unusable above 20x. I don't think it is a parallax or diopter issue. Or mirage. I could shoot one rifle and switch to the cold rifle and still had the issue.
Anyway so far I love the trijicon and don't regret it at all. Now if it continues to hold zero I will have to replace the vortex scopes on my 6.5 and .338 wm