I've read 1,000's of reviews and finally settled on a set of binoculars. A few things that were in common on most of the reviews:
1.) the only people saying that the Razor HD ranked "up there" with the big 3 were people that owned the Razor, sold them, or endorsed by them; not the only, but probably the majority
2.) very rarely did I read a review from an owner of the big 3 indicating the Razor HD matched in performance
3.) you have to be careful who the reviewer is; if they are endorsed by Vortex or have an affiliation with them, they'll use works like "stack up against the big 3"; that doesn't mean that are as good, but means they're getting up there close
I had both Swaro and Razor HD and I'm not optics expert, but on a tripod, doing several tests - yes, I could see a difference. You give each set to the average user, they throw them up and look through them, their will be little difference noticed. But when I start pointing out differences, you can't help but to not notice them anymore.
I kept the Swaro SLC HD and sold the Razor HD. Is it worth the extra money? - that depends. How much money do you have, how much do you enjoy and appreciate finer optics, etc, etc. I enjoy the quality of Swaro, so I chose to keep them and will not spend money on other things since I got what I wanted on optics.