20 years ago after going through a few pair of not so great binoculars I finally decided to pony up $830 for a pair of swarovski 10x42 slc's. That was big money to me at the time and those same binos would be about $1700 today. Those binos are my go to binos today while my buddies who were buying $2-300 binos were constantly upgrading to the next "almost as good as swaro/leica/zeiss" ones. Most of them have easily spent twice what I did by now and are still trying to find that magic $300 bino that's as good as an alpha and they still frown a bit when they look through their newest chinese wonder binos then look through mine.
For scopes on my deer rifle I have a meopta 3-12x56 for the low light performance, I've made several shots at last legal light on food plots that I couldn't have made with a leupold freedom. I'd much sooner give up the scope than the binos though. For my prairie dog rifles I've kind of gravitated to sightron SIII's as best compromise between money and repeatability. I do have a couple of nightforces on them too. I don't trust the internals of most lesser scopes. I've had some really accurate rifles start shooting 1" groups that tightened back up when I put a known good scope on it.
