Despite living a couple hours from the warehouse that maven uses to redistribute binoculars they import, I will not buy another pair from them because the customer service times are long and they will not support local dealers. I simply do not care to pay the ship back and forth and guess what I want from a webpage game.
On a more personal level, Maven is expensive for the range they are in, have odd glass sizes, and I really hate the ugly color of them. It might be a learned trait from getting screwed out of money from them, but the matt charcoal with the glossy orange makes me want to puke when I see it.
Vortex has been good to me.
If your hunting under 200 yards you wont benefit much from anything better than diamondback. Out to 500 wouldnt bother with anything else.
For a quality glass that can distinguish tree branches at 3,000 yards, ive been happy with the fury hd 5000. The range finder on it was a huge upgrade from the sig kilo bdx i previously had. Not many people need to see past 500 yards hunting.
The vipers are a little bit less contrast than fury hd but still better than needed for most hunters. I have a pair thats my loaner pair.
I really like the kaibabs for long range viewing tripod only. Also great for looking for star formations. The glass is just under the razor line, better than most mid level spotting scopes on the market, and having 3x the field of view of a spotter with a 56mm objective on each eye is very bright and very fast to find deer at 4 miles. Few people will ever need that.
Of course most people are biased by looks or what their friends use when it comes to optics. The only thing scientific about what optic you need is people with poor vision will for sure need higher quality optics to see the same as someone with excellent vision using a lesser optic.
Really you need to decide what ranges you want to see a given size of animal, and that tells you magnification, whether you want to identify them or appreciate the details of their fur or feathers tell you how good of glass to buy. Ive killed dozens of deer without binoculars or rifle scopes, yet i wont go a mile from my house without good binoculars these days.
