Since I'm new here... I wanted to give the forums a spin and get some input based on real-life experience, not some paid promotional pushers on the web. I'm looking for binos for a backpacking muley hunt later this year. I've been looking at the Tract Toric 10x42s and Leupold BX5 Santiam 10x42s. Thoughts? Can I go wrong with either? Are there others I should be considering? My preferential budget is under $1K.
Thank you!
So here is a different kind of answer. Compare as many as you can and do it looking
outside at things if you can do so in clear air and natural sunlight. Looking across a big box store is pretty useless. My answer, like many leans toward a Swarovski. I have a 30 year old pair of 10X42s, and a pair of nearly as old 8X30s because I wanted something just as good, but smaller and lighter for tighter timber hunting. Both are as good as when I bought them.
The 10X42s came about because I pulled a bighorn sheep tag and all I had then was some pocket Zeiss 10X. Speaking to spending many hours behind binocs, at the time I was working full time as a field biologist and spent probably 6 hours a day using a pair of 10X40 Zeiss. There were things about those Zeiss I found not the best, that being sun flare, and the fact that tracking flying birds at the edges of the field of view gave a feeling of vertigo. Apparently the coatings were not the best, and certainly the ground area at the edges was lacking. (I had the Zeiss to use because we had had a sorry pair of Nikons that were intolerable for many hours of use at a time, and I insisted that we had to have good glass. Nikon binocs then were several classes below their camera lenses!) I had seen/used some Swarovskis a writer friend had been reviewing, and had been impressed. Upshot was I ordered both from Cabela's, and compared the Zeiss against the Swarovski, using both on tripods. Dawn to dusk, close into the sun at sunrise and sunset, close focus, distant objects, etc. The Swarovskis proved best on the edge grind, and superior on coatings against sun flare. I still use them pretty much daily.
Swarovski also has superior warranty service and customer service. During that sheep hunt, I scratched the coverglass on one objective lens while belly-crawling in talus. Swarovski replaced it for free. Years later they were offering a special on older binoculars, and free of charge they completely refurbished the 10X for me, returning them like new, but for sure with the original lenses. Amazing service. They also adjusted the focus on the 8X free of charge. I only paid shipping to them; they covered the return shipping costs.
So although this reads like a sales brochure for Swarovski, my advice is to compare the best you can afford, and then buy the best you can find of those. Prorate that cost over a lifetime of use. Right now, my 10X42 Swarovskis have cost me about $36.00 per year, and the annual cost gets cheaper every year.
