leupold olympic 10X50 vs Nikon Monarch 10X42
 

wich one would you choose and why?

To my eye the olympics in 10X are slightly better, however if 8x is included the monarchs. JMHO but for around the neck hunting roof bins 8x is the way to go, more user friendly, larger FOV, lighter, brighter at low light and in the price range your talking with the above models the optical performance is typically better then a comparable 10X.

Throw out some food for thought, not sure how you feel about chinese glass, maybe like I did (or thought I did), that before I looked at my neighbours Zen Ray Zen ED 8x's he picked up recently. He paid 400 and they are impressive, to my eye better then the Vortex Razors and such. Similar styling to my Swaro EL's, optics I'll say are better on the swaro b/c I paid a lot more then 400 for them which I don't regret but I'd think hard about buying the Zen Ray Zen ED's. PAbowhntr on this site has wrote about several bins including chinese made ED ones, do a search for his reviews/comments or drop him a PM. He is very knowledgeable when it comes to the different classes of bins with experience having tested a lot of different ones in the field vs the store.

I think its best when selecting an optic to look through them first b/c we all have different perspectives on what looks good or bad to our eyes. Best of luck.