I received the mavens today. Without going overboard on details, I will say the build quality and ergonomics are superb. Nothing left to be desired here. The focus wheel is probably the best I've used. Smooth, and just the right amount of tension for me. I generally like a slightly tighter focus knob so that it stays on the same setting going in and out of a bino harness. The hinge is nice and tight. Eyecups are also great, much better than the zeiss which is not as smooth and has a reputation for failure (I've experienced this first hand).
Eye relief is perfect for me (no glasses). There are no black-outs. The view is also excellent. Very crisp, very bright, good contrast. There is a bit of field curvature only noticeable if you are looking right at the edge of the image. With a touch of the focus you are sharp right at the edge of the field. I think some would call this the "sweet spot". To my eyes it is plenty good and leaves nothing to be desired. Similarly, the FOV is excellent. Its reported at 430 FOV but I have read that this is an underestimation and that is measures out closer to 440 or something like that. Overall, the view leaves nothing to be desired.
Now for comparisons. I took all three down to my usual glassing spot where I can overlook the James river and spot ducks, geese, osprey, and look through some timber/brush out to around 800 yards. I glassed from both hand-holding and off a tripod.
The small victory was noticeably the weakest of the bunch today. This is mostly due to slightly more finnicky eye placement required to avoid blackouts. This can be expected with the smaller exit pupil. I also feel like it could use an extra millimeter or two of eye relief so that the eyecup would snug up to my face better. It also has a noticeably smaller FOV (although 400ish feet is not bad at all!) and is slightly less bright. However, the image is exceptionally sharp and generally very pleasing. If a guy was interested in a compact bino, this would be the ticket. I have to be pretty picky when I say that its not quite as easy to use as the other two. If weight and size were the primary concern, these guys would be the winner and would sacrifice very little until you get to the end of legal shooting light. Overall exceptional glass to my eyes.
I spent about 2 hours going back and forth between the maven and the conquest as the sun went down. There was no obvious winner at first. In terms of overall image quality, I think the Zeiss ever so slightly edges out the maven when it comes to contrast and color rendition. The maven has a slightly whiter or washed-out color bias. This could also be my own perception because I've used conquests for years and am very comfortable with their image. I also felt like the conquest had the slightest edge when looking through the brush, but I could not put my finger on exactly why. Both were equally sharp, bright, and provided expansive fields of view. I did not notice a bigger FOV on the maven. They seem about the same to me. Where the maven started to take the lead was with scanning around and quickly acquiring new targets. For some reason, I find it easier to come into focus with the maven. The zeiss was just a little bit touchy for me, similar to my old conquest 10x42 but a little more forgiving. The maven snaps right into focus without much trouble. Some people may prefer the slightly faster and looser focus of the zeiss, but for me the maven was the winner here. I have to emphasize that I am being VERY critical and picky here. The difference is subtle. I also felt like the maven had the perfect amount of eye relief and fit my face a little better than the zeiss, giving me fewer blackouts especially when quickly throwing them up to look at something. I just felt a little more comfortable using the maven, but it honestly took me about 1.5 hours to come to that conclusion. It was that close!
To summarize, I slightly preferred the image of the conquest after getting it perfectly focused. For whatever reason it is just a more pleasing image to my eyes. The resolution seems to be the same, brightness is equal, and FOV is similar, but my eyes just liked the image better. However I much preferred the ergonomics of the maven, especially the focus wheel which I feel is absolutely critical for my applications. If I was using these mostly off a tripod, I might have favored the zeiss. But for general use and especially hand-holding, the mavens were the ticket for me. I also did a quick test in low light and could not discern a difference between the two.
Some other factors: The maven weighs considerably less (16oz vs 22 oz). The maven comes with both objective and eyepiece covers. The maven has a better warranty (although my experiences with zeiss have been very positive). The maven has a bino stud (I don't think the zeiss does but I could be wrong). The maven is around $500 while the zeiss is around $800. The zeiss probably has better resale/name brand value. The zeiss brand will certainly be around for my lifetime. I hope the maven brand does well but its definitely newer, and breaking into the optics world can be tough (Zen Ray comes to mind).
In the end I decided to go with maven. It could have gone either way, but ergonomics wins with all else being equal. I hope this review was informative. I may continue to post some thoughts about the 8x30 format in general as I use these in the field over the next year. Feel free to ask me questions if there is something I did not comment on!
All joking aside, great write-up.
