Nothing worse than having a scope with "features" that you end up not needing or wanting. Especially fancy ballistic reticles, but this extends to oversized exposed turrets, parralax adjustment, illumination, too high magnification, etc.
Buy something bare bones, but of good quality, you will pay for every bell and whistle so when you have a limited budget that means you are compromising quality for features that you may not like in the real world.
I'm not a Leupold fanboy, and own a single Leupold scope, but a VX-3i fits your budget, is of very good optical quality, and will resell easily with minimal loss of value.
Nikon, Vortex, Bushnell, Burris, etc. all make some very good scopes, maybe even better value in some cases, but you will lose more $$ if you ever go sell, and none of them have better usability than the Leupold, and some are far, far worse in this department.
As an example, check the eye relief on a Vortex Diamondback, or the eyebox of a Nikon in person against a Leupold, might not seem big on paper, but in real use it makes a difference.
The user friendliness of a scope is a hard thing to quantify, it needs to be experienced.
Just my (strongly held) opinion
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