I've personally had a love/hate relationship with Vortex over the years. For several years, I cursed their name and told everybody and anybody I knew that they should avoid their products and that you were only buying a warranty with a product thrown in. This opinion was formed based upon a couple of their cheap scopes breaking, largely because of my own negligence and lack of understanding on how to properly mount a scope.
In the past couple of years, I've come to a new conclusion about Vortex. I still don't use their rifle scopes on hunting rifles, but from what I've seen compared to the other companies that put out products in the same price range, they're all basically the same. Pick your poison when it comes to glass quality and which brand's sticker you want on the back of your truck.
The difference with Vortex is their warranty. Technically, Leupold has the same warranty. However, the difference between theirs and Vortex's is, in my experience (dealt with both companies' warranty) Vortex is much easier and much faster to deal with.
Obviously, in a perfect world, you'd never need to use a warranty. But let's be real, life happens. Sometimes the tripod tips over, sometimes your binos fall out of your open harness onto the ground when you're stalking and you forgot to close it during a stalk. It's nice knowing you can send your optics in and be taken care of without having to fork over a "rush fee" or dig out the receipt from when you got them for christmas 7 years ago or worry about a product registration. And it's even nicer knowing you don't have to send them off into a black hole for 3 months and be without your optics. All of those are examples from companies that say they have a lifetime warranty, but they're all hoops you'll have to jump through with other companies.
Everything breaks, everybody has accidents. It's nice knowing a company will stand behind you when it does happen. I've got glass from Swaro, Sig, Vortex, Leupold, Maven, and Athlon, so no I'm not a Vortex fanboy. But customer service matters, ALOT. The more time you spend outside, eventually something will break, and it's nice knowing Vortex will take care of you. Maven will too, but you're not looking at their stuff.
Back to your original question, and taking my own biased opinions into account, I would buy the Vortex over the Leupold binos, without question. The Diamondback's are pretty solid for $200, in all reality. And eventually they will break and fail and so will the Leupold's. The difference is Leupold will take 6-8 weeks to take care of you, Vortex will have you taken care of in 2 weeks. Same end result, but after dealing with both companies, I would rather deal with Vortex without question.
