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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Steve C" data-source="post: 1540231" data-attributes="member: 56622">I suppose this all makes interesting discussion, and I admit I find it educational... on many levels.  It seems to me that those, including me, who were in position to offer reviews of this class of Chinese ED binoculars, certainly compared them to the alpha in terms of image quality, but, I for one never did and do not now, take the position that these are the absolute equal of the alpha class glass.  What they are is far, far closer to the alpha class than anything else in the mid price range.  The fact is the step up from the mid price glass to the alpha since Pentax phase corrected the DCF WP has been reduced a bunch.  These have reduced it more.When I get to an A-B comparison of any of the alphas and either my ZEN ED or Promaster, or the Atlas Intrepid I reviewed, yes there are certain attributes of the alphas that are better than the ZEN class glass.  But not every alpha beats the ZEN in every facet.I submit that firms like Vortex may suffer more problems from these than the alphas will.  Here, as an example, for about the price of a Fury, is a binocular that bests the Fury, the Viper, and the Razor.  It may not beat the Razor image much, but for half the price, well...  I think the upheaval that these might cause is in the mid price range, not the alpha range and that the dropping prices and increasing quality will come below $1,000 rather than above it.I really hope the alpha class producers do not go out of business.  I will never feel that the extortionist prices for one of their instruments is justified, so they realistically never had much chance to make anything from me.  I think if they do quit binoculars, it will be because they finally reached the limit of how much money people are willing to spend.</blockquote>

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