I had the conquest hd 15x56. Paired them with a swaro 10x and it was a money combo. I cannot say better or worse than the UHD’s as I’ve never owned the 18s but I will say you can generally find the zeiss’s for a damn good price (I look for open box demos) I only sold mine cause instead of a 10 and 15 I went with the 12x42 nl pure.
Euro optic has a pair for 1350. They are the previous model but the same ones I was running. The new hdx came out in 24
No, the Zeiss, Swaro and Meoptas are all very good 15’s each has a slightly different color tone. A lot of people have sold them all and purchased the 18 Razor UHD for the extra mag and comparable glass. I’ve never used the 18’s but people who have hold them in high regard, there really isn’t much to compete with them at 18x. My 15x Meostars outperformed my buddy’s NL12’s in some situations due to the magnification, like telling the difference between a branch bull and then telling how many points. Same would be true for the 18’s, in some places the mag will outperform slightly better glass but you’re also sacrificing FOV. Personally I sold my Meoptas and went with NL14’s kind of the best of all worlds but your paying a premium for it.
It’s always hard comparing glass when different magnification comes into play. I love my 12x pures but there’s definitely been a few times if I had my 15s I wouldn’t need to switch over to a spotter. You loving the 14x pures?
They just showed up today. Excited to use them, I loved my 15 Meostars and these are way better!
I see them in my future haha all the pures I’ve looked through are incredible. There’s a spot in my safe for all sizes
maybe in another life
Just curious have you looked into the swaro baby spotter. 17-40x and the eye box in that thing is amazing. I’ve seen them on eBay for around 2300. Might be worth a look
I have the 16x42s Zulu 6 and also the 18x56 uhd
Go buy a pair (or three like I did) from Cabelas or Sportsmans while you still have your non-pro 16's. My guess is that you'll find that the resolution is better on the 16's. The stability is better. They are $600 cheaper. They are lighter. They are smaller. The only benefit I could see is the low light performance, so that's a whole lot to sacrifice for 60 sec of improvement at each end of the day, with degraded performance all around the rest of the day.
