|
Hi Jared.
When I spoke to AOE on the phone, I asked about the quality of binoculars being made in China, and any differences in products which look and seem the same from different suppliers. Below is part of the e-mail I recieved from Raff at AOE.
Also as we discussed even though a lot of binoculars on the market look the
same they certainly may not be the same.
There are only 1 or 2 very good manufacturers of binoculars in China, and
they are not necessarily the ones every one talks about, and these
manufacturers make binoculars from the budget economical right through to
premium binoculars. The same manufacturers make binoculars for Celestron,
Meade, William Optics, Oberwerk etc to the specification requested by the
retailer/wholesaler. The same or similar looking binocular can vary greatly
in quality and performance from obvious things like coatings and prisms to
the not so obvious but also very important parameters such as the strength
of the ocular bridges, the type of focuser, the coverage of anti-reflection
coatings in barrels, the body style, prism mountings, and even simple things
like the type of eyecups. This is all from the same manufacturer, so its
important to make sure that the right combination is chosen for the best
comfort and performance. So a combination/difference of any of these
parameters and more can be supplied from the same manufacturer in the same
looking binocular to different binocular retailers and it does make quite a
difference to the final cost.
After having looked at a lot of variants that are available we are pretty
happy with the combination of parameters that we have chosen for our
binocular range.
Sorry to ramble on for so long but just thought I would try to help a little
and explain the differences that there may be in the binoculars out in the
current market.
|