Zeiss makes quite a few binoculars. Aside from an occasional misstep (Terra...), most of them are pretty good.
As with any product line, some models come together better than others.
Zeiss' SFL product line is something I looked at briefly, but never dwelled on it too much. They seemed like nice binoculars, but I never really looked at them carefully.
Imagine my surprise when the folks at Zeiss reached out and asked if I want to take a look at their new 12x50 version of the SFL.
They know I live out west, so they must have heard I have the space to really work out where the limits of a 12x50 binocular are.
Given that sending me a product to look at involves certain risks (until I am pretty much done with the review, I ignore marketing literature and any and all attempts from any company to tell me what to say), I figured that they either decided to live dangerously or that they are pretty damn confident of how good the product is.
I do not know for sure which one it is, but the ...

DNT's 7-35x56 has been here since February and I have managed to have some reasonably significant amount of time with it to date. This video is mostly in the nature of a "first look", although a bit more extensive than that. I will follow up with a careful examination of the reticle and low light performance.
https://amzn.to/4iGPl9w
So far, I am quite impressed with what the scope offers for the money.
Talking to one of the owners, he said he wants to be the undisputed bang for the buck champ under $1k. It is too early to be sure, but he might have a point there.
So far, I am quite impressed with the optic for what it costs and everything I have heard about customer support has been good.
The scope I have did have a minor glitch with the focus cell (I talk about that in the video), but it seems to have worked itself out. Perhaps there was some sort of a minor machining mark somewhere in there that got polished out.
Beyond that, it has been a good scope for me. I tried it on a ...

Here is another scope that has been here entirely too long without a formal review.
Delta Javelin 4.5-30x56, along with Athlon Ares ETR 4.5-30x56, stands at the top of the ladder of Chinese-made precision scopes I have seen to date.
To be fair, there are some new ones that are popping up that I have not tested yet (like the Telson 5-25x56) and some excellent ones that are less expensive (like DNT 7-35x56). Still, of the ones I have had a chance to spend some serious time with, it is Javelin and Ares ETR. Athlon has a Gen2 of the ETR that was announced this year, that I am very curious to test against the Javelin. Compared to the Gen1 ETR, I thought they were extremely close optically, but I slightly preferred the turrets and the reticle in the Javelin. We'll see if Athlon's Gen2 will change that.
I talk about Delta a good bit, but the brand is still not very widespread in the US. Still, there are several people selling them including Don at @AnnexDefense . Since he is a member here, I...

Do you remember what the turrets felt like on your Zeiss LRP S5? Did your elevation and windage turrets feel similar? Mine are quite different.

The elevation turret on mine doesn't feel nearly as good as the windage turret.

The windage turret is very tactile and audible, you can feel each click thunk into place.

My elevation turret is barely audible and the clicks aren't nearly as positive as the windage. It's easy to skip past click detent in the elevation turret, this not a problem on the windage turret.

I also posted this question on snipershide as "Gil P."

As is often the case these days, I am a little under the weather, so rather than work through the weekend as I usually do, I figured I can play hooky for a few hours and read a book.

The book happened to be Douglas Murray's "On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel and the Future of Civilization" that came out a couple of weeks ago.
https://amzn.to/4lVdR9c

I like his writing style which makes this very difficult subject matter a little bit of an easier reading. Still, he goes through a lot of eyewitness testimony of Palestinian atrocities and it is far from easy reading.

Easy or not, it should be required reading for all of our brainwashed college students demonstrating on campuses and chanting genocidal Hamas slogans.

It really should be required reading for anyone looking to understand the conflict in the Middle East.