Looking for binoculars sale?

Wednesday, February 18th, 2009 at 9:48 am

Owen asked:

Which is best for an inexpensive pair of binoculars

Bushnell 12x50 PermaFocus Focus-Free Wide-Angle Binocular
Sale Price: $56.49

Nikon 8x40 Action Ultra-Wide-View Binoculars
Sale Price: $64.69

Celestron UpClose 10-30x50 Zoom
Sale Price: $49.95

Reply:

Stay away from those perma focus binos. They usually have a close focus range of around 40 yards. These things works much like focus free cameras, you'll never get a nice crisp image out of these unless the object is prescription drugs without really far far away. The 12x of that bushnell will also make it near impossible to hold still without support.

If you have to go with these three, I'd go with the Nikon. I don't like zoom binos either, they usually discount the optics to make the cost affordable since these are harder to make.

For about $15 more you can get something like the Bushnell Legend 8x26mm. These are really good binos, their optical quality is almost on par with other binos in the $150 range.

Whatever you do, when shopping for binos under $100 go for a porro/dog leg design as opposed to the sleeker roof design. Roof binos can be distinguished by the straight tubes, they have a straight line going from the occular to the objective lens. Roofs are much more expensive to make compared to porros, so cheap roofs usually have really bad quality optics.

Look for binos with Fully Multi Coated lenses, as opposed to just Fully Coated or Multi Coated. Look for BAK-4 prism, as opposed to the BK-7 prism.