The boys at Minox have been busy taking their already super-fine, prize-winning, critically acclaimed binoculars to another whole level. Where to start… This new “HG” series has a newly re-shaped (by Volkswagen Design) and ergonomic body made of magnesium and coated with rubber armor for sure grip while maintaining rigidity yet shedding a bunch of weight. The new, twist-up eyecups have four click-stops in various positions, to improve the adjustment to eye relief. Lockable diopter setting. The handy diopter ring has click-stops for precise setting, with protection against unintentional resetting. With the help from retired Leitz engineers, they’ve added a distance scale (for precise distance-setting, or, range-finding) on the focusing wheel, allowing you to preset focus when in a hurry; range-find the object to be viewed. And spectacularly, their new one-turn focus, from close to infinity, called FCF… On the optical side, three significant improvements have been made. A novel silver-bearing MinoBright® coating is applied as a non-glare surface to the prisms to ensure superior light reflection, for brighter images with higher contrast. Then, with an improved optical calculation, providing outstanding resolution, with an increase in contrast of more than 17%. With this innovative MinoBright® coating, up to 21 layers on the objective glass surface, the loss of light through reflection is avoided, resulting in increases of up to 92% more light transmission through the optical system! Of course Minox is still the leader in aspherical lens technology, uses only Schott glass and was the pioneer in using Argon gas, protecting inner glass surfaces from corrosion and fogging. These are the absolute best binoculars, regardless of price, available today. We’ll stake our reputation on it.