John, being the well respected optics guy you are; I'd love to see you do a write up comparing the differentrangefinding binos on the market. Anybody else be interested in a real world comparisons?

I struggle with buying a 10 year laser rangefinder housed in a 30 year Binocular.

I'll do it right here, since I've used several brands of RF binoculars, including Bushnell, Leica, Steiner, Swarovski and Zeiss. The laser rangefinders in all of them work very well, partly because the beam's normally narrower than in most hand-size RF's, and it's easier to hold binoculars steady.

The shortest distance I can recall any of them working was just over 1600 yards. That was with the first generation of Bushnell RF binocular, on a bright late-summer afternoon, the worst condition for a laer. It read a lone, smallish juniper tree across a wide flat at 1609 yards, which I checked by driving to it, because one of the reasons I used the juniper was a straight road right across the flat, allowing the use of the odometer in my pickup to provide an approximate check of the range.

The optics were what I'd call "average," but the second generation of Bushnells has a slightly better rangefinder and noticeably better optics--though not as good as the other brands. All of them have very good optics, including the Steiner, because it's a Porro-prism. The other three are all top-notch roof prisms. Have gotten range readings up to 2500-3500 yards with the others.

Meopta has one called the Meorange IIRC. I'd love to see that one, but was told it is not available in the US at this time.

I now will trade for a little convenience and separate the binocular from the range finder. In my scenarios, I've made the decision to take the animal, so I put down the bino and reach for the rf if it looks like I need to know the distance.