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Hi John,
I pretty much concur with all the preceding comments. Like Matt (Rainmaker) I own cases full of premium eyepieces predominantly from Pentax and Televue. I don't have a zoom amongst the 25+ premium eyepieces I own.
As Les mentioned it is very rare that a zoom eyepiece / lens will optically equal a fixed focal length unit of the same quality. That applies to Camera Lenses, Eyepieces, Binoculars and Rifle Scopes. Some of the very high end German Zooms are exceptional but just a fraction behind an equivalent fixed focal length product IMO for a couple of reasons. They are also very expensive.
The Leica 8.9-17.8 is excellent as is the Leica 7.3 to 22. The Swarozski 9.4 to 18.2 is also very good. These are all well North of $1,000. The best astronomical zoom would be the Zeiss Diascope 20 - 75X (6.9mm to 25.1mm) which optically in terms of sharpness, contrast and light throughput, will equal the best fixed focal length eyepieces from Pentax or Televue and at about $2,000 it would want to. The thing with the zooms is I find they have some -ve's; the biggest one of which is that the AFOV narrows as the eyepiece focal length is increased.
To me the very best eyepiece experience combines many factors including optical quality (sharpness, contrast, light throughput and a lack of aberrations), build quality, The FOV for me and enough eye relief to use with eyeglasses. I find that satisfaction with fixed focal length eyepieces from Pentax, Televue, Nikon NAV HW and Docter Optics.
Cheers
John B
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