Maven vs Swarovski

[Cmrem700]

Has anyone tried the 18x56 mavens and the Swarovski 15x56 side by side? If so please tell. 

[PRDATR]

2 hours ago, Cmrem700 said:

Has anyone tried the 18x56 mavens and the Swarovski 15x56 side by side? If so please tell. 

https://www.rokslide.com/the-maven-b-5-18x56-binoculars/

[Cmrem700]

Thanks for the info. Just wondering how many people on here would feel like they are missing out not using 18x over 15x. 

[recurveman]

So regardless of manufacturer there are trade offs for magnification.   Typically you will loose brightness and field of view as you go up in power.   I've tried higher magnification binos and they are OK.   Typically the higher magnification needs to be the best quality because you are going to need to look further away for them to be effective.   For me in most western hunting situations I've found the 15 power to be about idea.    Not always great in a tighter canyon but I think it is the best all around magnification.  FYI - I own Swaro 10# EL's, 15# SLC's, and the BTX.    None are perfect and all are great for certain applications.    Personally I wouldn't own a pair of 18 power binos unless I had many other sets to choose from in my arsenal.      

[Cmrem700]

Thanks for that. I had a set of Swarovski 15s and sold them for the 12el. I miss the 15s and was thinking about getting them again or the 18x mavens. I never had the chance to compare the 12s against the 15s. 

[yotebuster]

I haven’t tried the mavens but I would say they’d be a pretty expensive pair of binos to own.  I’ve owned 6 different pairs of swaros and none of them have cost me more then $200 to own due to the awesome resale they hold.  A lot of people ask me how a person can afford swaro optics and I guess my question would be how can you afford to run anything else?  I’ve got a few pairs of $500 vortexikoneupolds laying around and I bet I couldn’t get $100 a pair for them anymore so they cost me twice as much to own as my swaros.   I’m in no way debating the quality of mavens, there’s some other real great binos (Zeiss the one that really stands out to me) that don’t bring near the resale that swaros do.  
As far as the slightly higher power, that’s a marketing gimmic used by bino companies to stand out and catch the eye of the “more is better” crowd.  You want to stick with a 1:4 ratio between power and obj.  1:5 is actually the most ideal for the human eye but most popular optics are 1:4 such as (10x40, 12x50,15x56, 20x80).  Anything more and you’re compromising on what your eye can take in as far as light (information).