BirdForum is the net's largest birding community dedicated to wild birds and birding, and is absolutely FREE!

Register for an account to take part in lively discussions in the forum, post your pictures in the gallery and more.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kevin Purcell" data-source="post: 1744059" data-attributes="member: 68323">I would try for 2 or 4. The ED glass makes a difference.The problem is at regular price the Ultra HD aren't in your price range. They were when they were getting sold off for $200 at Christmas. But not right now.And RJM much as he prefer the Ultra HD hasn't actually tried the other Chinese EDs (they're so off brand) so he has never actually compared them. So he can't actually know which is better. Those that have tried both of them (SteveC and FrankD) both preferred the Chinese EDs to the Ultra HD. And I even suspect that the Chinese EDs, the Bushnell's and the Vortex low end all come from the same ODM. The difference really is the brand.The Pro-Optic is a gamble as no one has tried it yet. The own name stuff can be junk (most of the time) but recently a gem appears (Promaster and the original Chinese ED). But Adorama would at least let you return it.BTW, I've looked through other Xi'an Vision OEMed bins (e.g. the REI bins) and they range from quite good to not so good (mostly going down in size ... the latter was an inexpensive REI 8x28 which is often not good for most makers). Given the recent direction of the market the odds are better that it will be at least decent. A couple of years ago no-one would have said that.That seems to be a primary purpose of the forum. Hang around for a while and the confusion slowly dissipates. After a few bins you'll get the idea. Plus prices are trending down at the lower end and up at the higher end <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite2" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=";)" />The other option of course is a secondhand bin for $200.</blockquote>

Verification