For a system possessing a non-linear output feedback normal form, an observer backstepping design is compared to a high gain observer design with respect to non-singular performance cost functional. If the initial error between the initial condition of the state and the initial condition of the observer is large, the high gain observer design is shown to have better performance than the observer backstepping design. An output feedback system with parametric uncertainty is then considered. It is shown that if an a priori estimate for the bound of the uncertain parameter is conservative, then an adaptive observer backstepping design has better performance than the adaptive high gain observer design.