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Well for a noob you know a lot more than I do about rifles. I am still confused on all those ammunition sizes etc. I do know a little about telescopes so I will provide some basics about telescopes, if any of the this fits with scopes all the better.

The the front objective lens gathers the light. The larger it is the more light it gathers. Pretty obvious so far. The larger the objective lens the higher the magnification can go before you hit a limit of about 50 x per inch of objective lens. 25mm = about an inch. If you exceed that limit you have empty magnification. The image is larger but you don't see any more detail. All the scopes people listed are lower than this limit, so they will give fine images. But the principal still governs the larger the front lens the better the image sharpness. A large front lens will also produce a brighter image, important if you need to see a bright image on a dark or shadowy condition.

Light that is bent by a lens does not bend all of the light to the same point. It focuses different wavelengths of light to different points along the focal axis. Here is where the quality comes in. The more expensive optics spend (or should spend) a lot of time with coatings and combinations of lens and lens glass to get all the light to focus at one point. If you see any rainbow coloring around the sharp edges of things you are looking at this would be a sign of an inexpensive lens. Images should be sharp with out any colors at the edges. Other things like baffling inside the scope reduce light scatter and produce a sharper image, with more contrast.

One thing someone told me about high fidelity sound equipment, yeah it has great specs, but how does it sound? would also fit with a scope. How does it see? All the brand names, specs and the like, don't really matter. How does it see with your eyes?

If the more expensive scope doesn't see better with your eyes then save the money.