Get the Sigs. Vectronix won't warranty any damage from use. I have the Vectors and they really are a quality product but you drop them once and it's a $3K brick. I think SIG owners would want to debate the glass quality between the two but frankly the topic of which binos are the best just isn't the bigger issue. A nicer set of binos isn't going to get you more points during a match. The difference in quality just doesn't manifest in a meaningful way and the bigger consideration becomes who's going to fix or replace your $3K binos WHEN your tripod blows over. With SIGs you can call them up and tell them you straight up broke your binos out of negligence and they'll send you a new pair. With Vectronix, it's buy once, cry once. You buy them, something happens to them, and then you get to cry because you just blew $3K.
I was shooting a match and we were having legit 40+mph winds. I almost packed it up and left two stages earlier but I didn't want to quit something, so I stayed. A guy was shooting his stage and I was spotting for him. He finished and went to pick up his brass and looked back at the squad. No one was helping him. At this point you either needed to have a hand on your tripod or fold the lags and just lay it down so it wouldn't blow over. He looked at me and I felt guilty, I saw piece of brass behind him next to his foot and I thought I'll just pick that one up real quick. As soon as I took my hand off the tripod and took a step it blew over. The arca mount broke off and an eyepiece popped off. I was pissed. The screws holding the arca mount on pulled right out of the magnesium housing and pulled housing material with them. Like little helicoils. Luckily the rotating eyepiece popped back on. I emailed Vectronix customer service asking if there's any way to fix the binos. About a week later Matti replied, apologized for the delay in responding and said they would look at my photos and get back to me to see what could be done. Another 5 days or so he responded to ask some questions about the screws that I had already explained. I responded and asked about different solutions, like drilling the other barrel for the arca mount. Another week, he responds with some other stuff about screw length, doesn't answer my direct questions. This goes back and forth for about 5 weeks and ends up with their fix. He said the Area 419 mount had longer screws and asked if I would like to try "that" to get some additional thread engagement in my blown out holes. I said yes I would try that. And then nothing. That was it. I guess the solution was they researched some screws for me and I should go buy them and try them. That's it. Fucking joke. So I went to Home Depot and bought a drill and tap kit, opened the holes up, threaded them and used plastic socket head screws from McMaster Carr and bolted the arca mount back on. And that's it.
It's clear Vectronix doesn't want to do anything to fix your binos, they just want the appearance of customer service. It would probably be different if one day your display just didn't come on, or your laser was off, but if it's clearly user caused damage, they ain't touching it. And to be fair that is very much a Euro mindset. Keep in mind, in German speaking countries average Joe walks around with a general purpose liability damage insurance. Like if you were over at your buddies house for dinner and you accidentally knocked over lamp on a side table. He would absolutely expect you to pay for it. And you have insurance for just this type of thing. That's a euro mindset. The problem is, the paradigm has changed with SIGs and Vortex warranties. $3K gets you 10'ish years of new binos from SIG. User error or not. And I've seen them turn around replacements inside of 3 days to get a new pair in someone's hands for the match or hunt that coming weekend. It takes Matti 7 - 10 days just to respond to the last exchange in a month long email chain.
