I tested two binos today over lunch and found the comparison interesting. First was the
Zeiss Conquest 8x40. Optics were certainly good, but I picked up some annoying edge distortion as I panned back and forth across the landscape. I could live with that, but the focusing on this unit was terrible. It was rough and gritty and inconsistent from one end of the focusing range to the other. Worse yet, it took two fingers to even move the knob. Okay, so I'm not Superwoman, but a roof prism should be a little easier to focus.
By comparison, the
Kowa 8x42 BD42 C3 focused like a dream. It was butter smooth, consistent and effortless, very much like some of their spotting scopes I have used. It was also very good optically, with less distortion at the edge and about the same resolution as the Zeiss. Bottom line is that it was one of those binoculars that was hard to put down. With a price hundreds of dollars less than the Zeiss, that makes the Kowa 8x42 BD42 C3 a great buy in my book.