First question: Yes. Boonie is lighter, gives you 1st axis adjustment and the ability to swap bars to change your mounting style. If you buy a Pic mount Fast Eddie, you are stuck with a Pic mount Fast Eddie. No changing to a direct mount without buying an entire new sight. With the Boonie, you have the ability to just swap the bars and change your mounting style. The Boonie gives you detachable sight tape wheels. Which if nothing else, makes it easier to put your sight tape on the wheel. But it also gives you more pointer adjustment on the pointer itself and the ability to tweak the entire wheel in relationship to the pointer which is handy. The Boonie also has a crisper windage click adjustment and IMHO a better and cleaner brake system over the Fast Eddies. All in all, it is a more refined and better optioned version of the Fast Eddie.
I can't comment much on your second question as I have virtually no experience with the CBE sights. I will say if you consider durability and reliability to be a very important characteristic, our sights are very hard to beat. Our metal on metal rail system is built with zero slop or play. You can grab the head of any of our moveable sights and it is as rigid as a fixed pin sight. Zero play, zero buzz in the rail. Something that not many other sight manufacturers can claim. Our gear system is nearly impossible to strip out or break. All our parts are also made right here in the USA with a lifetime warranty. 90% of our parts are made right in our own machine shop, with the other 10% of the parts made semi local to us. Every product is assembled in our facility in Harrisburg Oregon.
