[FlyFish]

I'm no expert when it comes to optics, but my personal experience is that there are no binoculars at that price that are worth owning. The cheaper binocs that I've owned at various times all eventually suffer from collimation problems (i.e., the two sides look in slightly different directions) that make them virtually unusable, and even without that issue the glass has problems with resolution and light transmission.

I have a pair of compact Pentax binoculars that (as I recall) I paid about $250 for around 10 years ago and I find them to be quite good, but clearly inferior to the high-end Swarovski and Zeiss products, which of course come with very high-end price tags. If you get a chance you should look through one of the other brand just to get an idea of how good binoculars can be. Unfortunately, you'll forever after be dissatisfied with lower-end products but at least you'll have a standard to judge them against.