The center focus feature sucks.
Our use cases are normally about identifying navigator aids (usually that's her) and sometimes identifying other boat names. The latter falls into two categories: while cruising (her) and while fishing (me).
Fishing isn't a major objective for us, but we do usually troll during the Chesapeake's "trophy rockfish" (striped bass) season, and when I need a boat name it's almost always about negotiating some kind of orderly crossing when we're both pulling planer boards with a bazillion lines out... and we're each with a virtual beam of 100-200' wide... and even though the charter boats must display a name somewhere forward, the combination of fancy fonts and bouncing/rolling boats (some distance away as we ideally plan ahead) doesn't make identification easy... so the 7x50 is only adequate sometimes.
Some initial observations.
Center focus still sucks.
The field of view is tiny, compared to what I'm used to. Partly that's because the eye relief isn't perfect for eyeglass wearers; partly it's a consequence of magnification and lens sizes. One outcome is that it takes me longer to point the binoc at the target, and longer to get at least an impression of what I'm after. With the 7x50s, a quick glance in many cases is all that's necessary (or possible), whereas with the 12x28s some time passes before I can figure out what I'm seeing. (Did I mention that center focus sucks?) OTOH, for our purposes, usually the target object is eventually findable, and once found, the field of view almost becomes a non-issue.
(If I took my eyeglasses off to use this binoc, the field of view gets better; I'm not likely to do that, 99.9% of the time...)
Focus seems a bit less clear, to me, than with the Steiners. Not just the center focus part, but actual focus quality after I've yutzed around with the focus knob sufficiently. That might be a matter of light transmission (smaller lenses and higher magnification), versus actual lens quality. I'll have to keep evaluating this part, but my initial impression is that objects in the lenses just aren't as clear as with the 7x50s, though.
Magnification is marginal for my use case. I could sometimes identify boat names ON THE STERN and in larger type at up to a half-mile away. OTOH, if the typeface was some sort of fancy script, that goes south. Bow-displayed names are a crap shoot; if a standard/bold sans serif font, maybe, depending on the angle of letters to sheer and relative to my viewing angle. Fancy fonts, not too great. Usually better than the 7x50s, though. Can't say whether the 14x40s would be enough better to justify the extra cost, weight, and even dhoster eye relief.
Stabilization seemed adequate, and I could usually make out nav marker details easily enough because of that. I can't compare with the 14x40s and their +/- 5° of stabilization, but these seemed useful enough for our purposes.
Wifey hasn't used these yet, so her impressions won't happen until later...
-Chris
