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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Torchepot" data-source="post: 3328256" data-attributes="member: 123265">Had a couple of interesting days in the U.K. recently comparing my 15 year old Swaro 10x42s with some potential replacements. These days quite often my wife carries the camera and I carry the bins so she hardly ever uses her 8x32 Leica anymore, this usually works out fine - but it does mean that any replacement for the Swaros would have to suit both of us as most of the time we are sharing bins.I've had a hankering for the Canon 10x42 IS L since I tried them a few months back but my wife didn't get on with them at all - despite admiring the image and extraordinary resolution she declared they seemed to be designed by (or for) aliens! I have also had my doubts that they would be able to match the Swaros for reliability - 15 years of daily use without a hitch is a hard act to follow. Also a few years ago I happened to witness a very unhappy owner being told that the repair of the faulty IS on his 10x42s was more than half the cost of a new pair - that didn't go down well!A couple of days later I compared my old Swaros with the latest version and also the 10x SF. On a dull overcast day at Lakeside Optics I spent about an hour going back and forth between them trying to justify a "trade up". I concluded that while there was a noticeable difference between old and new Swaros in brightness and the flatness of the field it wasn't enough for me  personally to justify the expense (over £1,000) of trading mine in (I was offered nearly what I paid for mine 15 years ago which is quite impressive). Incidentally despite several attempts to induce RB I couldn't detect it.The 10x SF were a big disappointment to me, the twist-up eye-cups were just really poor, with one side stiffer than the other and a really hit and miss feel to them - I was even told to try twisting them all the way in and holding the bins away from my face! Apparently works for some people! We played around with the eye-cups for a while and one seemed to get kind of stuck half way out, so I had to follow the salesman's advice and screw them both in. Then the nail in the coffin for me was when I noticed play in the focus - this was not something I was looking for - after all I think a tiny bit of play is almost inevitable - but what surprised me was that it was so much more than my 15 year old Swaros! To be honest this ruined the viewing experience for me and although I tried to make a genuine comparison of the optics I just couldn't get past the flaws with the build.I asked the salesman if these were a well used demo pair and he made things even worse by telling me that they were a new pair as the previous ones had been sent back because the armouring had deformed!Surely the build quality that I encountered is not typical? but hoping to get another 15 years faultless service from my next bins I couldn't expect that from what I saw of the SF.Our visit wasn't a complete waste of time though, before we left we tried the Swaro 10x50SV and we are both agreed that they are simply stunning. The extra weight and the rather poor CF are (for us at least) more than offset by that view!</blockquote>

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