ORIGINAL: Woods Walker
I bought my Ziess 10X40's 25 years ago, and they have proved to be the LEAST expensive pair of binoculars that I've ever owned, if you consider all the use they've gotten while delivering outstanding, 100% trouble-free performance.
Woods is right on the money with this one, I bought a pair of Swaro EL's 2 years ago and they are worth every penny in my book.
Look at it this way, you buy a new pari of binos every 2-3yrs because you want to upgrade, see better in low light etc.
I did this for 3 pairs of binos starting with a low end leupold wind river bino. Then went to a middle of the line pentax(which by the way is a pretty good buy for the $$$) then to a high end pentax. Between all of these binos i had about 1000-1100 bucks tied up in binos that i wasnt satisfied with. Each pair was a big inprovement of the previous but i still wasnt satisfied with the light gather capability in low light and being able to count points at great distance.
I finally bit the bullet and bought the swaros. They are by far the best glass that i have ever looked through. Now dont get me wrong there are still times when i wish i was able to see something with them but now i know that if i cant see it with the swaros then im not going to see it with anything else either.
Save the $$$$ you would have spent buying cheap ones and wait a few months and buy, as Woods said, a real pair of binos. Swaro has some great annivesary pricing this year also[:)]