Leica Ultravid HD binoculars

[richardkm]

At last, we took delivery of our first pair of Leica Ultravid HD binoculars this week and spent some time comparing them with the original Ultravid of the same spec.

What a disappointment. Where the ordinary Ultravid gave clear whites there was a definite greyness to the HD model. The originals are positively better than the new HDs. So I shan't be spending my hard-earned cash on them!!!!

[JeffH]

That's disappointing to hear I'm in the market for some new binocs and the new Leica HDs are (were ) on my short list.

Thanks for the info Richard.

Jeff

[Hobjob]

I wonder if Richard's pair were a duff set ??

Seems highly unlikely that Leica would have produced an inferior product to their previous one.

[zharca]

Hi, it might be worth spending some time with these rather than just a first impression.

It might just be like the experience I had years ago when I changed from Mamiya to Zeiss camera lenses. First time I saw a tranny from the Planar 120 reproduced as a dps, I thought "this isn't as sharp as the old Mamiya 135". In reality, the Mamiya was just a much higher contrast lens whilst the Zeiss reproduced much fuller, more subtle tones so it didn't look as sharp, even though it actually had higher resolution.

Is this happening here - is there just more detail in the highlights? After all, they will have to be very special to warrant the heavy price premium over Swarovski, Zeiss etc. The existing Ultravids are expensive enough!