tazzilla,
I think the second part of your question has been answered, whenever possible, "Try before you Buy". Living in a cultural oasis surrounded by hundreds of miles of farms, game lands and mountain ridges, I have to travel quite a distance to try before I buy, so I've depended on the kindness of strangers, who later became friends, for allowing me to try some bins I was interested in. I have also traveled some distances to try others, but I agree you can't beat EO if you have a "plastic" and a good line of credit.
As to the first part of your question, the accuracy of allbino's reviews, that's been touched upon, but I think some elaboration is in order especially after Dennis'
carte blanche endorsement.
You will find birders on these forums which range from staunch skeptics such as Henry to devotees like Dennis (who I think just ordered a Rosetta Stone course in Polish so he won't have to rely on Broken English translations
.
Dennis - Better hold off on your Rosetta order in case allbinos doesn't rank the 8x32 EDG #1.
I like the fact that the allbinos boyz at least sticks their neck out and evaluate and even try to quantify various parameters of binoculars. Although I like reading Wayne Mones' reviews (Audubon Magazine, BVD), you'll never see that kind of "data" in his reviews or in most other reviews.
However, some experts question allbinos' methodology. Experts always think that their methodology is better than the next guy's, so nothing surprising there.
I concede that sometimes "the numbers don't add up" with allbinos' light transmission figures.
But on the whole the reviews at least give you something to go on rather than a slanted ad. Where reviewers of all kinds differ is in how they weigh the results.
For example, allbinos does not like distortion even though some pincushion can be a good thing for terrestrial observation. The lower the distortion, the higher the ranking in that category even though you may see disorienting "rolling ball" in bins w/ very low distortion levels.
So it requires some experience and self-knowledge to read reviews like allbinos and figure out how you might rank the same category based on your preference.
I don't know about the top 15 slots, but you probably can't go wrong with starting at the top 5 if your credit line is big enough. Sometimes a non-alpha will show up in the top 5 such as the now-discontinued Leupold GR.
My advice is that you don't put all your eggs in one allbino basket (except at Easter
. Check the review section of Bird Forum, do a search for the bins on Bird Forum (some of the best reviews on not in the review section but on threads about the bins), check out other sites where there are reviews such as Better View Desired, Optics4Birding, binomania, etc.
I think you will see certain compliments and peeves turn up again and again, and that will give you a clue as to which bins to try.
But don't be surprised if when you get that rave reviewed bin, it doesn't work for you, because of some quirk either in the bin or in you.
This happened with me with the original 820 Audubon. The eyecups were so huge that I couldn't get the bridge of my nose in between the eyecups so I couldn't see the entire FOV (not close). Nobody mentioned this in any review I read! Nobody also mentioned the "rolling ball effect" in any review I read about the Nikon LX/HGs.
So if you hit the jackpot on the first try, consider yourself lucky. Unless you can get to the store and "try on" different binoculars and see "what fits" both physically and aesthetically, it can be a shot in the dark even at the top level.
But if you're Joe Average, who isn't sensitive to chromatic aberration or "rolling ball" or excessive pincushion or fuzzy edges and you have the facial features of a bulldog, well reviewed bins might turn out to be just as favorable to you.
Me, I want to see a "Durante Seal of Approval" added to the ISO standards so I know there's enough nose room for me and Frank.
Brock
