List of high end binos to research?

[jspradley]

Wow thanks for so many replies so far everyone! And I should have been more clear my budget is up to $1500. Is spending up to $3000 that much more noticeable in a pair of binos? I do mostly have them sitting on my tripod setup. I am currently running the field optics research bino adaptor so would like them to fit that set up. I do use them just in my hands some times tho


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You won't be disappointed with a pair of $1500 binos but you will notice a difference stepping up to the next level.

Or you can be a lucky bastard like me and score a pair of BNIB Swaro ELs for $1200.... muhahahah

 

[Newtosavage]

Sometimes, these optics discussions remind me of discussions about different calibers. As in, yea, a 7mm-08 is great but a 7mm Magnum is better. Or, a .308 is fine, but you really should get a .300 Win Mag., etc.

At some point, dead is dead and beyond that it's just wasted energy (or in this case, money).

The good news is that it's a free country and we can decide for ourselves, which is what I encourage everyone to do with optics since as I keep saying - we all bring our own lenses to the game.

I could poll 100 members here and 99 out of the 100 would assure me that SLC's were better "for me" than any $1K bin, and 99 of them would be wrong because they don't have my eyeballs.

I would encourage everyone looking for optics to keep an open mind and try as many pairs as they possibly can before committing their hard-earned dollars. You might find, like I did, that pure image quality isn't all there is to a pair of binoculars and that you're willing to sacrifice a little field of view or corner to corner sharpness or light gathering in exchange for compactness, light weight, great handling or eyecups that fit you really well. To me, those are what I notice 90% of the time I use binoculars because at some point, image-wise, dead is dead.

 

[204guy]

Since brands have pretty thoroughly been discussed, I'll just add 15's are specialists and suck as all arounders. 12x50's ride a line between being specialists and ok all arounders depending on how much open country you're in and how steady you can hand hold them. 8x32, 8x42 and 10x42 are usually what you're going to want to be looking at for a 1 pair do all bino.

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[alansousa]

I would agree with you Doug, EXCEPT for the Kowa Genesis, they are average at best. How can a company make such a great spotter and have such average bino's?

Also, don't forget the Maven B2s in this conversation.

that’s what I think too, it doesn't make sense for kowa to be famous for its spotting scopes being better even than the Swarovski ones and the binoculars being below the alphas like Swarovski, Leica and Zeiss. I think it might even be marketing. it doesn't make any sense