I'll give you my 2 cents worth FWIW.
I've had the Razor HD for a year. At the gun show we had here before Christmas one of the booths is a Vortex dealer and he had one of the new Razor HD's. You will get some opinion from some quarters that Vortex is too crappy a company to expect anybody to pay that kind of money for anything Vortex. I had a couple of issues with the Razor HD I have. First I had some trouble with the focus/diopter ring, one day it just came apart in my hand. Vortex fixed it. I eventually reached the conclusion that the binocular was a bit off spec in a couple of collimation parameters and sent a detailed note with the binocular back to Vortex. Vortex does indeed stand up to their warranty, and they fixed the collimation issues and I have a better binocular. The OPTICS are first rate and do indeed stand up without any embarrassment to much more expensive optics stuff.
Looking at the two Razor HD's side by side I was struck by a couple of points. The first is that the original HD Razor I have is not as well built, nor does it have the more refined sense of "panache" (for lack of a better term) possessed by the new RAZOR HD. The new Razor HD is a hell of a lot more compact in nature, it feels smaller than the old on more than the degree that it should simply based on the physical size differences. The new one looks like the product of a lesson learned on the part of Vortex...if you are going to sell $1.000+ binoculars, they should look the part.
The optics on each are exceptionally nice. The older one has a wider fov, the newer one has sharper edges, so the sweet spot is about a wash. The newer on is the one I'd pick it just looks better built than the original one. As far as "stand up to the alphas" goes, I'll say this. If you cant see what you need with the Razor HD, the optics are NOT the issue.
Now, however I'll throw another monkey wrench into the deal here. I got a good look at a Zeiss Conquest HD the other day. The new Razor HD is $1,279.00. The new Conquest is $969.00. I like the Conquest HD better than either of the Razor HD's. I like the Conquest HD as well as the Victory FL. The Zeiss does not have any better view than the Razor, but I can say it is more of a "whole package presentation" to me. That new Conquest HD was the first $1,000 strata binocular that maybe says to me it might be worth it to me. The rest of the higher end stuff, including the Victory FL have always said to me they cost way too much for the gain. I had purposely avoided reading anything about the new Conquest until I had the chance to look at one, and I was sort of surprised to see $969 on the tag. I would have figured closer to $1,400 from what I felt and saw.
Last edited by SteveC99; 01/01/13.
