Pros: Excellent compensation for eyeglasses, outstanding quality, brightness, sharpness.
Cons: Much more expensive than the Nikon Monarch that nearly equals the FL T*.
The Bottom Line: If money is no object, Zeiss is my winner. Your mileage may vary. Try them all in hand before making a choice based on reputation or price.
mldavis2's Full Review: Zeiss Victory T* FL 524521 Binocular
There are other reviewers here who are better able to compare competing brands and address specific engineering features of these binoculars. I made my choice after spending hours on the internet reading comments from respected reviewers, especially the Cornell Lab of Ornithology reviews of Winter 2005, followed up by a trip to the huge Bass Pro store headquarters in Springfield, MO where the selection is staggering.
I was interested to see how the highly rated Nikon Monarch, Zeiss Victory FL T*, Leica Ultravid BR and legendary Swarovski EL stacked up in a head to head test. I had a pair of each placed on the counter and found a dark corner of the store about 100 yards distant to compare brightness and contrast, and a distant street sign outside the window to compare sharpness.
Dollar for dollar the Nikon is a best buy, coming dangerously close to the big guys, which is what Cornell seemed to find as well. But the big three won on brightness and contrast by a hair, presumably due to the use of better glass.
I won't repeat the excellent description given earlier here, but my pick was the Zeiss FL T*. First, it had very slightly better eye relief for my glasses with the adjustable optics in the inner position. Because I wear tri-focals, any reported edge softness was irrelevent because the optics in all of these binocs was better than the edge focus of my glasses, since my viewing area is restricted to the top 1/2 of my lenses.
Second, I thought that the Zeiss were very slightly brighter in very dim light than the others, a factor in searching for birds in deep shadows of trees.
A third factor that no one has mentioned is that the Zeiss binocs don't LOOK expensive. The diopter adjustment is hidden beneath the focus knob, there is no external marking of the 8x42 rating, and the Zeiss logo is a tiny blue inset on the top. These "features" may not attract those interested in strutting their prize possessions before other envious birders, but they do deter the clueless crowd from snatching your old dull black binocs where they might find a nice dark green pair of Swaros lying about.
These are precision instruments, all of them. The Zeiss focus knob is quick and precise, no backlash, smooth as, well, glass.
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