I taped my new old UV HD, over the serials, red dot and under thumbrests, with gaffer. Holdability improved substantially - for me, and there are no distracting logos for people to focus on.
I might send the pair in for a cleaning before the end of warranty, as I don't find them really brilliant - maybe standing in a case for a decade did that to them. But they're nice binos, I can read lettering which I can't even see with the naked eye.
Edmund
After using the 7x32 UV HD binos for a few days, I kept having this impression of dullness - so in the end I took them to the local mall which has a shop in shop Leica stand, and the salesman took one look through them and said looking through them was like looking through a veil My own comparison there with an 8x current Trinovid showed a marked difference in brightness, and a 7x should beat an 8x any day, plus or not.
I took the binos to the "official" Leica store in Paris to send back to Leica for testing, I said all I want you to do is send them back to the factory for them to check against the spec, and every time I opened my mouth they told me I was wrong. They couldn't accept them, I'd have to take them back to the place I bought them. They couldn't see a problem, yes they were not bright but "previous generation binos were less bright". The guy at the mall wasn't Leica trained so he didn't know what he was talking about. etc etc. In the end I forced them to send them in for a check, but they wouldn't even accept that a product bought three days earlier from a licensed dealer with a freshly filled in warranty card and customer receipt was under warranty, and said the factory would see "that they were less than ten years old". On the other hand they obviously phoned the dealer because they said "I had tested the binos when I bought them".
I don't know why these binos are a bit veiled - the problem is I can't ebay them without a letter from Leica saying they've been checked because the brightness issue is such that as a private individual I would be open to a charge of defrauding the buyer.
The only thing I and the Leica salesperson agreed on was that the binos were their manufacture, not in the same brightness class as current stock, and that I had not dropped or damaged them in any way.
I thought Leica had their act together a bit more. All they needed to say yes Sir, we will send the product back for a check, thank you, bye.
Edmund
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