Carson 3D ED 10x42 vs Vanguard Endeavor ED 10x42 first impressions.. (1 Viewer)

I've spent a couple hours with these two and here is what I've seen so far.

Center field resolution is darn good in both and they are realistically equal. After looking at street signs, license plates, bumper stickers, etc. only once did one better the other and that was a bumper sticker where with the Vanguard I could read about 80% of the words and with the Carson I was able to read them all.
Edge resolution was good on the Carson and very good with the Vanguard. With the Carson things were crisp out to 50% and reasonably clear out to 75-80% then they became a little blurry. The Vanguard was crisp out to about 75% and only became slightly blurry all the way out to the edge.

Where edge resolution clearly went to the Vanguard, low light viewing clearly went to the Carson. Again reading signs into the evening there came a point at which I simply couldn't make the letters out with the Vanguard but the Carson was still showing them clearly. Although when looking at things not quite as distinguishable as letters, such as trees, leaves, houses, etc the difference was barely noticeable. The Vanguards have silver coatings and the Carsons have dielectric, possibly influencing the low light performance.

Looking at stars yielded crisp points of light with both bins but looking at a bright half moon there was an X through the entire field of vision on the vanguards. There's probably a name for that. You could also see it in the Carsons but to a much lesser degree. Same when I looked at a street light. Details of the moon and even the street light were still sharp.

Ergonomics was actually the deciding factor for me. Right out of the box I never really got along with the Vanguard. They were not comfortable on my eyes or nose. The Carson was very natural feeling and that is the reason I will keep them.

The "X" is made of two diffraction spikes coming from the roof prism edges. There's one in each telescope, perpendicular to each other, so you seem to see an X when you view with both eyes. Very bright spikes can be a sign of poorly finished roof edges, but both the moon and street lights are a harsh test.

"roof edge diffraction spike" is the closet term I can see.
Finishing of the edges, and also whether the phase correction layers are right, can affect it, apparently.
Extra field width might help whip it up too, I'm thinking....as a trade-off.

Endeavor or Endeavor II?

first generation Endeavor.

I just like to add my customer service experience with Vanguard here in the UK, I have a pair of Endeavor 10x42 and had an issue with the focus wheel becoming loose, I went to bird fair last week so I took them with me to see if they could show me how to tighten it up.
It isn't possible to tighen them and they aren't supposed to come loose (I should add that they come in for quite a lot of stick being used for a lot of raptor work they are often on the ground or over my shoulder as I climb trees etc).
The guy on the stand took a quick look, took them to his boss who said leave your details we will send you a new pair out as soon as we get back, 2 days later a brand new pair arrived on my door step, fantastic customer service.

Nice comparison review. The Carson 3D is one of those binoculars that doesn't have a lot of reviews. I am curious how they would compare to an old favorite, the Bresser Everest. Not that I have either, I am a Nikon Eii man!