I prefer Schmidt and Bender, Zeiss, and Swarovski, in that order with 30mm tubes. They all expensive European glass. It boils down to resolution, clarity and light gathering, they cannot be beat. I have used Leupold and replaced them with the European optics.
But! I do know lenses, expensive lenses, and agree with your opinion about Zeiss and Swarovski. Never had experience with Schmidt and Bender so can't venture anything first hand. Zeiss though, I have observed objects though that should be impossible to see optically, violate the rules of optics but by gosh, there they are. Extraordinary flat field of view with low distortion and high light transmission.
At the end of WWII, General Patton loaded up convey of trucks and sent them into the Russian sector to load up the Zeiss factory and all the technicians + family they could get a hold of. This is why Zeiss is a western company. I have figgered that the Zeiss folks they missed in the round up ended up with Swarovski, which is why these Russian optics are so good. By the way, this was told to me by a Zeiss factory tech that came from Germany once a year to service my Zeiss gear under the service contract.
Within the price range that seems to be set points to something along the line of Bushnell or equivalent. I strongly advise a variable magnification. I was deer hunting once with a guy using a fixed 10X scope when a buck popped up about 40 yards from us. All he could see was deer fur so he shot and it turned up he was looking at the foot. Duh...