I have the Nikon Monarch 8x42s, all-weather. Compared to top-of-the-line binocs, these are relatively inexpensive, and I'm happy with them as such. I don't have much to compare against, but the image seems nice to me: bright and colorful. They're susceptible to chromatic aberration when viewing against heavily backlit, or bright objects. The extreme edges are a little out-of-focus, but to me, this is minor and hardly noticeable since it's natural to simply center the subject matter in view. I imagine one can spend a $1000 to eliminate these shortcomings.