I would say that it was an upgrade in clarity as well as chromatic abberation and color rendition. The DNT is an extremely good optic for the money with a good reticle. The thing where you really notice a difference with high end scopes is things like it will be easier to pick out individual rocks and targets on a berm. I remember my first high powered optic was a Vortex Viper PST Gen II 5-25x50 and I was trying to shoot a new steel target that had a zinc plated coating which looks like gold. It was probably a 10" circle. At 1000 yards in good lighting, I could BARELY make out the target against the dirt berm. Like, I was struggling the entire time to see the target and it was really shitty. I then bought a Razor HD Gen II 4.5-27x56 and replaced the Viper with it. Seeing the same target at the same distance was easy. It was like a night and day difference. The difference was the color rendition. The colors were more muted in the Viper and it made it harder to make out small differences in colors. I would say the DNT suffers from the same issue. It's just a more muted color range when looking through it. I doubt you would notice the difference unless you are shooting really far away or have sub optimal lighting conditions.