I ordered an Athlon Midas 8x42 based on the review cited by the OP. The binocular had many nice characteristics like reasonably sized sweet spot, decent CA control, wide field of view, good contrast, decent baffling--certainly good performance for its price of ~$300. Unfortunately, my binocular was miscollimated enough to cause a bit of eyestrain so I returned them. Rather than replacing them, I decided to try binoculars at lower (Sightron) and higher (Maven) price points. I was also leaning more to 32mm objectives than 42mm for daytime use.
Unfortunately, there are QC problems with precision optics even at rather premium prices, but in general, the failure rate is higher at the lower prices and the customer service by the manufacturer at lower prices tends to be replacement from current stock which may or may not include previous returns. I bought the Athlon and Sightron from Amazon where it is basically a numbers game: you keep ordering and returning until you are pleased or give up. When I bought from Maven, they sent me several binoculars to test out and spent quite a while on the phone hand holding and answering questions. I have faith in Maven that they will help me with any problems I may have, even though I realize they have not been in business for 100 years.
While there are better and worse values at a given price point, I believe that precision optics is one of those areas where you basically do get what you pay for. It isn't linear scale; at the high end you pay large sums for small steps. I don't really think it is helpful for a reviewer to say that a $200-$300 binocular is just about as good as a $2,000-$3,000 binocular. And this is prior to the morass of what good, better, or best mean, since this is such an individual equation.
Alan