black crow
Well-known member
That's a pretty cool idea. I can research that myself. I'll find a home for them where they can live on. Thanks for a great suggestion.
Why on earth would this sub forum be dropped !?!! :brains:
Zen-Ray may be defunct temporarily (permanently?) , and have disappeared as paid banner advertisements, but newsflash! Zen products live on in the field as well as ever as BC has reminded us :t:
The guts of the Zens also live on in other brands such as the Bushnell Legend M.
For owners of original Zens though, congratulations - you are now the proud owner of a classic !! o
Chosun :gh:
Now that they are defunct, this subforum could be dropped.
Jerry
I am glad to see Troubador, apparently speaking from his role as Moderator, standing firm on the sub forum.
We need to step back here and think about Zen Ray for a minute. For the record, I am fully in support of the above comments by Chosun Juan. This is my opinion, and may well be viewed as being worth what I got paid for it. I do not for a minute think that we would see the fantastic improvement in the upper mid tier binoculars without Charles from Zen Ray hitting the Hornet’s Nest with his stick. His vision was that there was a pressing need for good, serious, field worthy binoculars at an affordable price level. As he saw it, there were alphas then there was mostly junk. His vision was to close that gap. I further do not think we would have nearly as many serious sub $1K and $500 binoculars as we have now without the push from Zen Ray and the buzz that was created. Yes there were other companies involved in the push, but ZR seems to be the topic here.
He accomplished the large part of his vision with the second generation ZRS (Summit) and the subsequent ZEN ED and ZEN Prime series binoculars. He took an opportunity that he saw and ran with it. Good for him. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. He took the risk. As I have said before, he ran into trouble by biting off more than he could chew too quickly. He did in fact illustrate quite clearly that a good field worthy binocular, one that would show you what was there to be seen, without spending upwards of $2,000 was a realistic target. He introduced binoculars that started the trend of improvement in the upper mid tier. I do not think for a minute we would see things like the Zeiss Terra and Conquest, Nikon Monarch 7 and Monarch HG, the Vortex Razor, or the new Leica Trinovids without the push Zen Ray was involved in starting those few years ago. Maven, GPO, Tract, among other new companies I missed, will continue that push. We will all benefit from that.
I am glad to see Troubador, apparently speaking from his role as Moderator, standing firm on the sub forum.
I agree with SteveC's post for the most part. However, it's one thing to take a chance and have it not work out so well. I don't begrudge Charles for that. What I do find bush league is his total lack of communication, both on this forum and evidently the social media. There's no excuse for leaving his customers hanging, trying to figure out WTH is going on.
I agree with SteveC's post for the most part. However, it's one thing to take a chance and have it not work out so well. I don't begrudge Charles for that. What I do find bush league is his total lack of communication, both on this forum and evidently the social media. There's no excuse for leaving his customers hanging, trying to figure out WTH is going on.
I'm one of those who are stuck with a dead Zen (ED2). I won't go into the details except to say it went back to Zen about 2 years ago and came back a little mangled but not repaired. It's dead, unusable. Since I had luckily won one of the Primes in that contest years back (remember that?), I said skip it, it's not worth the trouble to complain. Nobody's home anyway. The Prime is solid as a rock, mostly flat field (which I like), and frankly better than the ED2. I use it quite often.
But the experience has left me cautious about buying from upstarts. And I passed on that Bushnell Legend M megadeal because it's a variant of the ED2. Bushnell probably can't repair it either, but they have the resources to at least replace it if stuff goes wrong.
So many new companies! I think I'll let them sort themselves out while I walk off into the sunset with my Swaros. The Swaros will probably outlive me at any rate.
Interesting comment on the comparison to the Bushnell Legend M.
Are you suggesting that they are made by the same manufacturer, and if so do you have any solid data to support that, or are you just assuming since they both share an open hinge design?
heartache, depression, insecurity are valid excuses in my book.
Yeah that all went through my mind also. I think he could have been embarrassed/ashamed or something but I think his lack of trust in his customers understanding, were he to have come clean, might also have been because he never really was that decent of a guy in relation to his communicating so well with us, but rather was so nice because we were paying customers. That's the usual drill as far as my experience goes. They are your good friend until there's nothing more in it for them. We will likely never know but my cynical nature believes it's likely the latter. He really didn't want to deal with us anymore because there wasn't a monetary payoff. I think his actions speak for themselves. I never think of a person I do business with as a friend. It's just a little game that gets played.
I will offer my thoughts. There are many variants of similar binoculars being
made today by many companies and sellers.
With those models, and clones, they could come from many different factories
throughout the world, including China.
The Bushnell Legend M, has good reviews, I have one, and I recommend it.
It is sold by Bushnell, so at this time it has a solid company backing its
warranty.
Jerry