I've got a bunch of different models and use them all, and since my wife and I do a lot of birding that is where most of their use happens. For hunting, I am almost always using something in the 8x30 range, usually a pair of older Swaros but often an old Zeiss as well. My night vision is pretty bad, so the few minutes of usable light I give up early in the morning and late in the evening are more than compensated for by the light handy size and weight of 8x30 glasses.
One thing that many seem to overlook is that, beyond optical quality, construction quality is far superior with good glasses as compared to low- or medium-quality ones. For long-term glassing while searching for game...as opposed to just glancing through the glass to identify something you have already seen...anything less than perfect collimation will result in eyestrain, headaches, fatigue and generally ineffective use. I've never had or used a low- or mid-range binocular that remained in collimation year after year for long periods; lots of cheaper ones aren't even properly collimated when brand new. Whereas my Zeiss 10x40 and 8x30 Classics are both right around 30 years old and still perfectly aligned.
I have a Steiner binocular that rates right at the bottom in terms of construction quality. Within a year or so, the hinge became loose, the collimation completely went away, and they were practically unusable. Thank goodness for individual eyepiece focussing; I cut the hinge off and now have two reasonably compact, decent quality monoculars that live in two different vehicles and have come in handy many times.
Vortex? Terrific warranty; good thing, too, because you will be using it...regularly. So what if they replace the item with no questions asked? That doesn't do you any good at the exact moment that you need them, when they don't work.
