It seems illuminated reticles are all the rage nowadays. I suspect a lot of manufacturers are putting a lot of advertising $ into making the the illuminated reticles a major selling point on their scopes. For example, in looking at the choices for reticles with the Titan line of Element scopes at one major online retailer, there are no choices for non-illuminated reticles. That makes me wonder if the price jump from the Helix to the Titan level is really just selling bells and whistles and not really much of a jump in quality for an extra $300 to $400. I think Element makes decent scopes. But just like so many other manufacturers, they have to have multi levels of quality and ever bigger objectives and shiny glowing ultra busy Christmas trees!
 
As 90+% of my shooting is in dark wooded places, IR is a must have. Maybe an age related thing but loosing sight of the reticle on a dark target is beyond frustrating. Uj
never thought about that, but have lost the cross hairs multiple times in the woods, and it takes a few seconds to reset to focus on the target again