Vortex is really great glass, I have done my share of testing them out hunting in all kinds of conditions here in alaska. Ive compared and used my vortex side by side with Swaro's, nikon, minox, Kahles, leica, and zeiss. I have seen a difference in the very best Swaros, and Leica....a very little difference. I will go as far to say that my Vipers are 98% of what the swaro's and Leica are. Here is one thing that sold me on Vortex. My friends and I were out caribou hunting, in the flat tundra of alaska. we had 3 bulls spotted at a very very long distance. the ground was so flat that the bulls were skylined, so i was glassing them and able to look at them with the light grey/silver sky as the background. They were so far away i was getting the mirage affect and trying to judge trophy quality. the mirage affect was not helping and my buddy was asking if we should invest 2 miles into this stalk. I was saying the one bull had mass, he had something special about his bez and shovels, but i couldnt really tell. He took his brand new swaro 10x42 els off his neck and said try these, maybe you can tell how good he is. I thought ya, maybe I can tell better than my 8 power $400 vortex.......well, wrong. Bottom line was i came to the same conclusion using both binos, I could litterally see almost no difference, the magnification was a bit more with the swaros, but they were a 10 power vs my 8 power vipers. I came to the same decision, and that was, we needed to take a closer look. we did and took a great bull. I can not justify spending at least $1000 more for swaros over the Vortex Vipers.
