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Message: <blockquote data-quote="brocknroller" data-source="post: 3178064" data-attributes="member: 665">Yes, however, can the Maven survive extreme testing like the Conquest HD? <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H64FCbtKKqs" target="_blank">Binoculars Buckshot Test</a>I think Steve C. should perform those tests and videotape them. I'm sure he's got plenty of buckshot. :smoke:The idea of customizing your bin is intriguing, but apparently No Script isn't allowing all the cookies necessary to price those options, if there are added costs (next to the option check boxes is $0). Not sure if that means you haven't added any options or if they are free. If there's info about this someplace on the Website, I'm not seeing it. <a href="http://app.mavenbuilt.com/#/B1/0842/2900012/2900032/2900042/2900042T/2900042B/2900062/2900072/2900082L/2900082R/2900103/2900092/2900112" target="_blank">Options</a>Despite Steve's glowing review, the fact that Mavens aren't available through dealers may be problematic, because how many people have even heard of the brand, let alone tried one? I came across Maven last year and mentioned how the B1 looked a lot like a top end Brunton. At least if they were at dealers, people other than Steve who gets to try them for free, would have a chance to take a look at what the brand has to offer. As it is now, all we have is Steve's review before we lay our money down. While his review was well written and thorough, and as Frank mentioned, it covered the usual concerns of BF bin forum members, binoculars are a very personal instrument, and what works for one might not work for another. For example, CA control, which, btw, I disagree with Steve saying that most people aren't sensitive to CA. From reading these forums, it appears that many if not most members can see CA, what varies is how much of it they can tolerate. IMO, users like Steve and Bob who are immune to CA are the exception not the rule. If he meant that remark about beginners, buyers who walk into a sporting goods store to buy a pair of binoculars, that's another story, but if they don't see CA in a non-ED bin, it's out of ignorance rather than lack of sensitivity to it. Sooner or later, they will see it even if they don't know what it is called. Proof that a lot of people do see CA is the growing number of ED bins on the market and the fact that all top alphas contain some type of ED glass. From what the experts say, the CA problem was self-inflected by the use of negative lens internal focusers, which increase CA. To compensate, companies started adding ED glass to their objectives. The upstart company's lowest cost bin, the mid-sized B3s, is $500. The B1 is $900 and the B2 $1,000. I can imagine if Zen Ray or Vortex started out like this, they probably wouldn't be around today. Even if the Maven's optics are better than the Conquest HD, Zeiss is well known and well-respected brand. They have been around forever, and buyers can be confident that they will be around years from now when their bins need repairs. As Gijs mentioned, the company that was supposed to brand and sell these bins is now defunct. That makes me wonder if Maven will be around for years to honor it's "unconditional life-time warranty."?I think it might have been a better strategy for Maven to have started out with entry-level priced products and mid-priced products, and then build their reputation before introducing their top end bins. But instead they went right to mid-priced and second-tier pricing. If you check out their "About us" section, the marketing rhetoric is clearly aimed at rural hunters ("outdoorsman'), not namby-pamby birders who watch birds in the park. <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite2" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=";)" />"How’s the hunting on Madison Avenue? Yeah, we don’t know either. And so long as there’s plenty of rock and ice, mud and single-track, elk and elbowroom out here in fly-over country, we don’t care to find out. We are Maven. A new company focused on the design and creation of innovative products for, and by, the modern outdoorsman."You don’t find yourself twelve miles in, four pitches up, fifty feet into your backing, or seventy yards from the buck of a lifetime by accident. Likewise a company doesn’t sprout from the rocky Wyoming soil without first making some deliberate, unconventional choices. At Maven, we refuse to compromise our mountain town roots, to follow the well-worn path to a dollar. We choose instead to make game-changing gear and use it in the places and pursuits that inspire us… everyday."While the rhetoric is a turn-off, if the optics are excellent and offer the best bang for your buck at its price point, which Steve's review suggests, I don't care, it's all about the view. Well, at least I wouldn't care, if I could afford a $1,000 bin. But what would concern me is what I mentioned, the company's longevity. Unless your name is Rockefeller, you're probably not going to lay down $1,000 on a brand that may be here today, gone tomorrow. I'll check back with Maven in a few years, by which time I might have put aside $1,000 to buy a good quality second-tier bin. As long as the company doesn't keep increasing its prices like the alphas do, otherwise, the B2 will cost $1,500 in 3-5 years. Brock</blockquote>

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