Hello Paul,
I live in New York, NY and I bird watch in Central Park. See my
long running thread. As our state is large, neighbors might be an exaggeration.
There is at least one person on this forum who complains when I criticise the SE, as it was rather popular, fifteen years ago. However, since you asked, I will write of my experience.
I found the SE to have a less than generous FOV, maybe by only .5º, but enough to notice. Secondly, I was having difficulties with blackouts or the "kidney bean" effect, a complaint of some eyeglass wearers like me. Many users have no such problem but I did. Perhaps, the flatter field was not particularly comfortable for me. It felt as if I had to fight the binocular. Elkcub discussed this in
this thread, post #9 and #13. As an analogy, I found Apple computers far more friendly than Windows computers.
As the SE has now been discontinued in the USA, Fiske on Cloudy Night, see
post no. 4, found customer service to be lacking for a binocular which should have under guarantee. A couple of years ago, there was a thread on BirdForum about difficulty replacing the eye cups from Nikon, USA.
Before I settled on the FL, I was content with a Leica 8x32BN, but the Fl won out.
Stay safe,
Arthur