STEINER Marine Binoculars Commander 7x50 (New) - German Quality Optics, Crystal Clear Images, 140m Field of View, 30 Year Guarantee, The New Leader on All Oceans

What can I say. This is the third pair of Steiner binoculars I'm returning. The first was a Navigator 7X50 that I purchased on Amazon. I returned those because the left side could not focus. It's as if the eyepiece was tilted and about half the image on the left barrel was always out of focus. I decided to get these commanders since they were "superior" optics to the Navigator. I actually bought my first set of Commanders from Hodges Marine and had to return those because of some kind of weird blemishes inside the eyepiece in between the lens elements so again I purchased another pair here on Amazon. Optically, they are ok but not that great for $1500 though. They have lots of distortion around the edges and while they do have an 8° field of view, only the absolute centers are sharp. The biggest issue I had with the second pair is that during assembly at the factory somebody got glue on the outside of the rubber where it dried and marred the surface! On a $1500 pair of binoculars, this is simply unacceptable. Anybody who tells you that these are 5 star binoculars is just WRONG! They cant even compete optically or with fit and finish to my 10 year old Fujinon FMTR 7X50 and those retail brand new today for less than half the price of these Steiners.

PRO build quality rubber armor feels great and adds grip hinge is PERFECT, stiff, yet moves smoothly when you apply enough force open hinge design makes carrying with one hand easier huge field of view (459 feet at 1000 yards) incredible in low-light minimal colour fringing away from the centre, and only really noticeable in some situations eg. snow "auto" focus works from about 20 yards out natural colours diopter adjustment is marked +-5 but can rotate to about +-8 (i'm -8.5, -9 with -.5 cyl and -.75 cyl and can use them without glasses comfortably but the image is sharper with glasses) CON heavy big fold-down eyecups don't work great for glasses users presumably made in germany but doesn't say anywhere on the binos or packaging THE VERDICT if you can afford it and deal with the size and weight, BUY THEM