I may certainly be in the minority (and opinions vary greatly with many), but there are two Nikon lenses (zooms) that I personally felt performance fell far short of what I was expecting/hoping for, especially for what they cost. These are the latest 24-120 f4 and 16-35 VR, but for somewhat different reasons. I can see excellent sharpness in the 16-35 VR at its wide end where it would do fine on the D800 save for the excessive distortions at/near 16-19mm, which for complex subjects (and subsequent distortion correction) with large # of files, simply wasn't an attractive or workable option. Nikon I believe wanted improved sharpness at 16mm over the 17-35 f2.8 at 17mm, so excessive barral distortion unfortunately was a consequence.
I recently tested a # of samples of the 24-120 f4 (latest version) for use as a "walk around" and as long as not shooting subjects that are complex in nature, at the wider end of its zoom range, distortion correction is pretty straight forward. The other issue for me personally, was it's overall relative performance on the edges/sides (save for focal lenghts above approx 65mm). It wasn't bad but wasn't what I hoped for either. Sort of middle of the road in parts of the frame. Again this is a wider range constant aperture zoom and compromises have to be made. I felt even a superb sample of Tamron's 28-75 f2.8 lens ran rings around the current 24-120 f4 but again its range is considerably shorter. Yet if looking for a high performance relatively light/small walk around lens where high(er) performance is required for a high MP camera, a really good sample of the 28-75 f2.8 offered not too much optical compromise relative to larger Nikon pro glass.
I'm only mentioning these observations as obviously even a decent lens might look alright on a D800, but if extracting max. performance is desired, lens selection becomes all that more important.
Dave (D&A)