I've owned the Nikon Monarch 5 8x42 and liked it alot, despite the clumsy eye-piece covers.
It's bright, with good almost edge-to-edge definition, clear high contrast colour definition, nice and light, certainly very easy to handle, the grip is good and the new rubber objective lens covers are a very good tight fit, both around the barrel and on the objective, nice quality rubber too.
At under £200.00 great value for it's low light performance, I found the degree of resolution to be excellent, but I've not handled the Hawke.
Others have liked it too, the NM5 8x42 came fourth in a competitive field here :
http://www.birdwatching.com/optics/2011midpricebins/chart_2011.html
Which is better ? Is the Hawke worth the extra £120.00 ?? The only way to decide is to try both yourself. We are all uniquely sensitive to the various parameters by which we judge value ; one person may experience colour abberation with one binocular that another person may not
with the same bin in the same situation. Just compare your own experiences to those of a published mass product overviewer like Best Binocular Reviews and draw your own conclusions.
One thing to consider if you are in chop and change mode or trading up is it's eventual resaleability ; very high with a market leading brand like Nikon. With years of good reviews the Monarch will sell all day long. With a no-name brand ? It's hard to say.