Anyone who owns gen 3 night vision or has any experience with it should feel the same way. Why do I think it's the king?
Your eye or eyes are essentially seeing a real image that your brain instantly recognizes. You can see shadows, reflections, lights, and more. Compared to a thermal device you can move better with it wearing it head mounted and gen 3 gives better eye relief. You don't get the same effect doing the same with a thermal even something small you can wear head mounted or hold to your eye. The battery life is better also. You can do so many things pretty well wearing a gen 3 device such as a PVS-14, PVS-7, dual -14's or a binocular-goggle, like driving, riding a motorcycle, walking, hiking, shooting on the move, etc. You just can't do that with a thermal. Especially driving. If it's got a windshield thermal can't see through glass. You just don't get enough visual feedback to drive with thermal as your primary view. At least in my experience.
As awesome as thermal is if I hypothetically only had a choice of a high-end thermal or a real nice set of gen 3 binos, I'd pick the gen 3 binos hands down. I can do more stuff I like to do with it.