Casey,
All good points. In fact one of the Asian companies just mentioned, the one which sold the 10x42's I gave to my Alaskan guide in 2009, folded a year or so ago--because other, larger companies had "discovered" the same factory, and were now selling basically the same thing for a little less money.
However, when a friend (a very successful lawyer who still likes to save money) asked my opinion on bargain binoculars in 2012, I recommended a certain Asian brand. He looked through them, and looked through some alphas, and figured he could buy two of the Asians for less than one of the alphas. So he did, figuring the second was a good guarantee. He's still using the first one, and yes, he hunts a lot. (Oh, and the company selling the Asians is still in business, and offers a very good guarantee. I've never had to use it, while using several of their scopes and binoculars pretty hard.)
I've owned two of those older 30mm-SLC's, and eventually they did become second-tier--but unlike you, I had a chance to carefully compare them to many of what you call "second-tier" binoculars, and even 15 years ago they did not surpass them. But whatever.
Again, I've found it interesting that for many years Japanese cameras have dominated the professional photography business, where optics are far more often compared via the baseline of photo sales than by what hunters believe they see. Yet somehow Japanese-made binoculars can never equal those made by a very few companies in central Europe, and in fact some other binoculars made in central Europe by other long-time optics manufacturers somehow don't rate the same, even when they get great reviews on bird-watching websites, where binoculars are THE major tool of that sport--and some of those other companies have made parts, lenses and even complete optics for alpha companies.
But don't get me wrong. Three of the binoculars I have no intention of replacing, and hunt with often, are my Zeiss Victory 8x42, Swarovski EL 10x42, and Leica 8+12x42 Duovid. They all great glass, and if somebody can afford them, why not buy them? But I have had the opportunity, both in the field and under more controlled conditions, to test some recent, relatively inexpensive Asian binoculars with all three, and while the Asian stuff didn't quite match the alphas in some minor ways, they were very damned good. And certainly better than the best alpha stuff from 25 years ago.
