Here's another way I look at it: I took a pair of 8x42 Alphas on a hunt in the Alps, and my hunting partner had a US branded 10x model that was one of the very first to have a built-in rangefinder. The alpha binocular would retail at 3x to 4x the price of the US branded model.
The glass on the 10x was quite good, indeed, and the results of the rangefinder matched exactly those of stand-alone alpha rangefinders. When glassing whatever drainage we were in, there was nothing one binocular could find that the other could not. Differences in view were small, if any.
It was only when we began glassing the ridgeline beyond our drainage that the alpha binocular was able to find game animals that neither of us could make out with the 10x US branded model. Whereas we'd both considered the binoculars to be equal "for hunting purposes" a few minutes before, the superiority of the Alphas quickly became evident.
Accordingly, if one asks, "Are Alpha binoculars better?", the answer is obviously, "Yes!". However, for me to make that determination, I had to be on what was probably a once-in-a-lifetime hunt in a national park in the Alps, and to be glassing areas that were 2 drainages (and at least a full day's hike) away from me. Would I notice the difference in a swamp? How about in a thick stand of hardwoods? A box stand looking across 300 yards of Midwestern corn field?
A Corvette's the same as a Corolla when you're both stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic.
FC
