Anyway, one of the nights the sky finally cleared enough to see a few stars, so out came the binos
I was located in the north of Singapore, looking south towards the city and across many HDB estates! The sky was fairly hazy with scattered clouds but the view to the south was reasonably unobstructed. Due to the construction of my flat, my view was pretty much limited to at most 45deg upwards (so no zenith views), meaning much of my field was the worst as far as light pollution is concerned. On this night, only Rigil-Kent (A-Centauri), Mag 0.1 was visible with the naked eye, even nearby Hadar, Mag 0.55 was not. (stars located with Stellarium) Hadar was however, clearly visible with the binos so it was not due to a small cloud covering it.
On to the bino proper
I selected the Nikon Action Ex as it was a sealed, waterproof set with an fov of 6.4 deg despite its 10x mag. Eyepieces are twist-click type and eye relief is stated as 17mm. Practically, this meant with my glasses I clicked out one stop and without I clicked out fully for a comfortable, pleasing view. Focus was TIGHT! (But has loosened up very slightly with more use) I think this is actually an advantage since stars are generally at infinity hence no need for frequent re-focusing. If anyone finds one that is not at infinity, TELL ME!!!!!!! Diopter adjustments are made on the right eyepiece through a rotating lever set jusy behind the eyepiece itself. I think this is much mroe comfortable than a rotating eyepiece and allows me to tell by feel if the position is right for me, approximately. The view through the binos is nice, bright and sharp. I did not feel any significant eye fatigue are using them for almost an hour, a marked improvement from many smaller "night vision" type binos.
About 20% of the outermost FOV is noticably darker than the centre, stars placed in this area are also less visible and clearly coma-ed. However,stars (and terrestrial objects) within at least 50-75% of the center of the FOV are pin sharp. Somehow when looking through, I didn't even notice the coma at the edge of the FOV unless I specifically looked for it. Even though I knew it was there, once I concentrated on just looking through normally, my mind somehow just stopped seeing the edge defects.
Using the binos, despite a Mag 0.1 sky (!) I was able to see most of the stars of Lupus. There was an interesting ? shaped group of stars in the body of Lupus (which I have never seen before - newcomer to stargazing) and I was able to make our v2 Lupus (HIP 75181), Mag 5.65 distinctly without any special techniques like gaze aversion. I think I was able to make out a faint star halfway between y-Lupus and n-Lupus (Stellarium says HIP 77350, Mag 6.4) but it was at best a very dim spot.
In summary, I really like my new binos and I think they're just what I wanted - something to help me see all the hidden stars in the sky without spending a gazillion bucks on a telescope that takes time to set up and requires a large amount of storage space. The Nikon Action EX is not perfect, but I'm very pleased with the views and unless I go looking for the imperfections, I don't even see them at all in normal use. Even though its measured usable FOV (as per Cloudy Nights review) is less than the Pentax PCF binos, the "unusuable" part makes the view look "roomier" (I really don't know how to describe it) hence visually more pleasing (and maybe contributing to less eye fatigue).
I also considered the Fujinon 8x42 and Pentax PCF WP2 but eventually went with the Nikon as it was significantly cheaper to acquire (in Singapore) and the view pleased me
