This is a subject that, and of course you know, if you ask 100 people their opinion, you’ll get 1000 opinions.
I have over the years built up about a dozen custom AR uppers and designed each one with a specific calibre and purpose. I have the full gambits of scopes specific to those purposes, red dots to high power, with true 1x to various powers in the middle. I don’t go cheap on optics either. I wait until I can afford what I really want because I don’t want to pay for something that I wont be happy with.
For 25 yards you could easily get by with just a red dot. If you want flexibility to use on longer ranges, I recommend a true 1-4 power so you can have full field of view both eyes open in close and zoom out for the occasional 200-300 meter shot.
If you start with 4x or more, you wont like it for close in use. If your varmint hunting, 4x to 8x is great.
1x for each 100 yards is the rule of thumb. 1000 yards = 10x. An AR is going to be stretching to get out past 400 yards usefully. A 308 is decent out to 8-900 yards. If you are going to do extended range, beyond 1000 yards, you need something bigger.
Anyway, that’s my 2 cents.
FRegards :)
I recommend this thread in particular.
It reviews many scopes (not red dots) and has a very nice comparison table up front. You can go down this rabbit hole about as far as you want...:)
I wasn’t really asking what the best scope was. I was asking if anyone here remembered a thread from 1-2 months ago that had a picture of an AR scope for around $500.00 that looked kind of like an AGOC, maybe a little longer, though.