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Message: <blockquote data-quote="St. Elmo" data-source="post: 3351705" data-attributes="member: 49831"><p>Back in 2005, I purchased an UV 10x42. Within months the focussing system started to loosen up. The freeplay got so bad that when I went to set the diopter, I had to make sure I turned the knob in the same direction when setting the second barrel so as not to introduce an error the size of the freeplay. Birders focus constantly and the sloppiness was annoying as hell. I had a no-fault passport warranty so I sent it to Leica. It came back with less freeplay, but the problem returned to its prior magnitude soon thereafter. In addition, they set the diopter a whole two points off. Very sloppy work. Someone at Leica was incompetent or didn't care. I started to hear of other Leica horror stories with this and other issues, so I dumped the Ultravids, purchased a Zeiss FL 8x42 and didn't look back. The freeplay defect was supposed to have been fixed in the second generation of Ultravids... It appears that beauty is still only skin deep....Draw your own conclusions...</p></blockquote><p></p>