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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Steve C" data-source="post: 1402987" data-attributes="member: 56622">I got my hands on the Monarch X today at the Sportsman's show.  Edit: checked my notes, no ED glass, but there is dielectric prism coatings.Now that rod down the middle is the dumbest (double deleted expletive) idea in ages.  For those who wish to reminisce about the Zeiss Dialyt, go ahead, these things feel nothing like the Zeiss.  There is literally no place to wrap your fingers around the barrels, it might as well be a solid hinge. It has all of the grace of a rounded edge brick in hand.The  Nikon man joked around about designing a picatinny rail for that bar, so the user can mount "accessories" to the top of the binocular.  At least I hope he was joking.  There did not appear to be a tripod adapter, so the idea of being able to use the rod for that will have a certain appeal.Once past that, the optics are very nice indeed.  They are Japanese, so in spite of the superficial similarity to the Chinese ED there seems to be no relationship.  Comparing to the ZEN ED, the image was quite similar, but the fov advantage clearly to the ZEN and the Zen was a bit sharper image too.  But the Monarch X optics are far closer to the EDG binoculars in the both than the original Monarch is to the Monarch X.The color bias of the X seemed a little warmer than the EDGE they had.  This appears the have the makings of a optically very useful binocular.As posted here, the Premier is indeed the resurrected HG (or whichever was the last version had in production)  So they see they have the bases covered with EDG>Premier>Monarch X>Monarch ATB>Trailblazer.</blockquote>

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