Received my optic yesterday, and got it mounted in my Era Tac adjustable mount.
While it may not matter to everyone, their packaging overall is absolutely fantastic, both from a visual perspective and execution The scope itself is well protected, all of the individual components i.e. sunshade, battery, allen key etc. are all individually bagged and placed such that nothing could bounce around or cause damage during shipping. It came with a nice a sticker and lens cloth as well, which was a nice touch.
The manual is very well laid out, and not overloaded with tons of words. It clearly states what you need to know about the optic, and not a ton more, which I greatly appreciate.
While the standard flip covers that come with the scope are great, and perfectly serviceable, I went ahead and got the Tenebraex objective and eye piece caps as well. Anyone who's used them will generally agree they are one of, if not the best scope caps/covers you can get. I'm very happy I got them at the same time.
Onto the scope. The overall execution of the optic is outstanding. I work in the industry, primarily as a gunsmith, and as such I tend to pay very close attention to the details. I could not find a single thing that visually stood out as being off, or otherwise incorrect. All of the MIL hashmarks on both the windage and elevation turrets lined up perfectly with the index arrow on the turret housing - I have had other optics in this approx price range with slight misalignment of the hash marks relative to the index arrow and while it's not the end of the world, it does matter if you're competing and you want to confirm your turret is exactly where you turned it to.
As for the turrets, the clicks are audible, and very well pronounced. Not so much that it feels like you need to crank on the turret to adjust it, but each click feels nice and sharp, and leaves no question about how many clicks you've move the turret. Not sure what else to say, but the turrets are fantastic.
I have yet to zero the optic on my rifle, but setting the zero stop appears to be extremely straight forward. The optic did come out of the box mechanically zeroed in the middle of both the elevation and windage.
The diopter, like on most optics in this price range is nice and fast to adjust - enough tension that it wont move out of position, but easily adjusted for your eye.
Having the integrated throw lever is a really nice touch, and there is an included small wedge to fill the gap in the power adjustment ring if you choose to remove the throw lever. I truthfully thought it was a little gimmicky that the throw lever had holes through it to view your elevation turret, but once I got the scope mounted on a rifle, they did work as advertised, and you could look directly "through" the throw lever and still see your elevation turret numbers/index point. Again, this was a nice little touch. I will say, due to the range of magnification, the throw lever at minimum mag (4x) or at maximum mag (32 x), may collide with your bolt handle depending on if your gun is left or right handed, and how low the scope is mounted. I don't particularly consider this a failure of the design, insofar that the adjustment ring needs to rotate a sizeable mount left and right to swing through the complete magnification range, but it is worth noting. I also suspect this might be more common on 2 lug actions than short throw actions with a 3 lug design.
The CLR reticle is very well done. I have primarily used the JVCR reticle from USO, and some additional time behind the Horus H59 reticle. I haven no issues with the Horus reticles, but the CLR, much like the JVCR reticle are not too cluttered while having enough useable information to make corrections while shooting. I almost never dial for wind, and I suspect the CLR reticle is going to be equally perfect in that regard.
I wont comment on my perceptions of the optical clarity as of yet because I've only had a chance to mess around with the scope at night inside, but thus far I don't foresee having any concerns when it comes to how bright and clear this optic is.
Hope my above info helps others out if they've been looking at the Apex Rival (or their other new products released @ ShotShow). I'm extremely happy with the scope overall, and I think in this price bracket Apex has done an outstanding job of putting all the features in the scope you could want, while still being fairly priced.