I purchased my own binocs after getting some great feedback from you but as noted in another post, am helping my birding buddy find a pair but on a higher scale than my Bushnell Legends. I hate to admit it, but I have enjoyed learning all that I have about the optics and looking at different brands/models. They have come a long way.
Anyway, he has limited his choices to Swarovski, Zeiss and Leica but now I know why he has such a strong bias to the Zeiss. He found a retailer who has both the 8x40 Conquest and the 8x42 FL. They were owned by the same guy who traded them in toward some very high end camera equipment (apparently the guy has several other high end pairs of Zeiss and Leica).
The bottom line is, my friend can buy either pair of the Zeiss which are less than 1.5 yrs old and in absolutely mind/brand new condition for $600 firm on the Conquest and $1300 for the Fl's. I will do some searches on here to learn more but it seems they both use the same prisms and other high quality components so I'm not sure what differences you would see and how to justify a cost that is twice as much. He can spend the extra if necessary but wanted to understand what is better. Also, not sure what the preowned market brings for such optics so your opinion on price? By the way, he must order online and the store does not accept returns unless "misrepresented" so he can't order both or try them locally.
Hi rdfish1.
The FL may have the same kind of prisms and optics as the Conquest, but that is also true for many other binocular models.
The difference is in the details of the execution, the coatings and the mechanicals. Those are the factors that make the FL better and more costly.
That said, it just seems to me that your friend is doing the same as buying on Ebay, pig in the poke with no returns. What about the warranties? Were they assigned to the original owner and where does that leave your friend?
zeiss has lifetime transferrable warranties and the pig/poke isn't exactly true, if misrepresented and they are not like brand spanking new, he can return. The retailer isn't allowing "buy them both to see what you like and return the other". I guess that's the point. Anyway, I'll try to learn more abou the differences between these two, just surprised pricing is more than double, both new and in this case so obviously something is different.