To be fair, I think some of the PVS-7 hate comes from (myself included) guys that have had to use them for prolonged periods with either a USGI skull crusher, or with a PASGT with the old, terrible liner and two point harness/chinstrap. Moving to the MICH/PVS-14 from that was a game changer.
I'm not a huge '7 fan, as I've said many times before, I think they have all the disadvantages of a bino system coupled with all the disadvantages of a monocular system, but they are still better than nothing and fairly cheap. There are also those folks who simply can't use a monocular without getting a tension headache. They're certainly not unusable, but in addition, they come with the odd tube that can't really be used in anything else and the built-in mount (I'm also a bayonet "hater," and the A/C models are fairly rare and not usually what people talk about when they talk about PVS-7s).
~Augee