Best porro under $300?

[cab1024]

A good friend dropped her porros at Yosemite this weekend and they are now out of whack. So I'm advising her on her replacement pair. Budget is $300 and she is used to 8x42 porros. In my most recent email to her I said this:

So it comes down to at some point,
a) do you want the best binoculars you can have for $300, or,
b) do you want the best image for the least amount of money, or,
c) do you want the best image for $300?
And my answers to those questions would be, respectively:
a) Celestron Noble or Nikon Monarch 8x42 or 10x42
b) one of the assorted porros, possibly the Action without EX/WP/FP (even cheaper)
c) Nikon E2 (EII) 8x32, a porro for $299 with no WP/FP but great glass (though still not as good as the Nikon SE which is closer to $500, porro and also without WP/FP)

So, if she goes with option b), what are the best porros under $300?

-chuck

[SteveF]

If she can handle the bulk and weight (which really aren't that bad), a great choice would be Swift porro 8.5x44 Audubon. I think a lot has been written about this one.

As you said, the 8x30 EII is fine choice, also.
Other suggestions?

[chartwell99]

If she can handle the bulk and weight (which really aren't that bad), a great choice would be Swift porro 8.5x44 Audubon. I think a lot has been written about this one.

As you said, the 8x30 EII is fine choice, also.
Other suggestions?

For approximately $50 - 60 more, the Eagle Optics Platinum Rangers (I know, they're roofs not porros) in either the 6, 8 or 10 power with their excellent performance, no fault warranty and waterproof integrity are hard to beat.

[Robert Ellis]

I was going to say exactly what SteveF said. Both would give better views than any rood within at least twice the price.

[Chris C]

If she can handle the bulk and weight (which really aren't that bad), a great choice would be Swift porro 8.5x44 Audubon. I think a lot has been written about this one.

As you said, the 8x30 EII is fine choice, also.
Other suggestions?

I'll second this list--I had the swifts for 7 years and they were great. Was never bothered by the weight, though the bulk was a pain occasionally adn would caution that reaching the focus knob is not easy for those with small hands. Optically as good as roofs in the $1000 range. Haven't looked through the E2, but these would be a great choice if size, bulk, or weight are a concern.

Cheers,
Chris C.

[Pileatus]

A good friend dropped her porros at Yosemite this weekend and they are now out of whack. So I'm advising her on her replacement pair. Budget is $300 and she is used to 8x42 porros. In my most recent email to her I said this:

So, if she goes with option b), what are the best porros under $300?

-chuck


Chuck,

Nikon E2 8X30, while they last. If she drops it, Nikon will fix it...for life.

John

[cab1024]

Chuck,

Nikon E2 8X30, while they last. If she drops it, Nikon will fix it...for life.

John

Thanks for all the advice everyone. How do the E2's handle low light? She was searching for Great Gray Owls at dusk in Yosemite before she dropped them. I've heard you won't notice any difference between x30 and x42 in broad daylight, but you will see a difference at dawn and dusk. How big a difference?

[Robert Ellis]

Not much of a difference. You can see as much color, but you can not see as many tones of each color. I have owled with 8x30s, and considering that color is not a primary field mark it should not be a problem. Differences are noticed on the bench and in the shop, but used in the field they all work, and quality bins especially so.

[ZeNiTh-PbArM]

hi,

have been owling for a long time with 8x30 deltrintems and switched one day to habicht 7x50 and was delighted at the difference. now i don't owl with 8x30 anymore.
besides, with 7x50 i also can see bats!

regards,
zp

[Sailcat]

I suppose it's redundant, but she can't do better than the Nikon 8x30EII for the price.

[cab1024]

With all of the info I've fed her, and with the Swift 8.5x44 porros in her short list of options this is what she said:

So I talked to a guy at Eagle Optics and he said, look, even if you
don't go throwing your binos down a granite cliff on a regular basis,
every little bump and thump has the potential to throw porros slightly
out of whack - enough slightly-out-of-whack bumps, and suddenly your
image is off, or blurry, or it's so subtle that you don't really
notice, except suddenly you're getting headaches after using them when
you didn't used to before. Roofs, he said, will take a lot more bumps
and thumps before they make you motion sick when you use them.

He's a hunter and a guide and has been using roofs for 15 years
(porros before that), and says that at the $300 limit, the lesser
optical quality of todays roofs (compared to same price porros) is so
slight in the major brands as to be nonexistent (unless you have the
sight equivalent of perfect pitch).
So she's thinking more seriously about roofs now than before. She's going to borrow my Monarch 10x42's for a day on Hawk Hill before she makes her final decision.

Do you guys buy what the Eagle Optics guy had to say?

[Tero]

I would be a little hesitant to buy the Eagle Optics product without having tried it. Binoculars are pretty personal. If you can find some Audubon/Swifts, try those. I liked their roof prism ones too. Here they sell them at Wild Birds stores, I think I got it right, where they sell seeds and bird feeders.

[lucznik]

I think he's crazy. 3:-)
A porro prism binocular costing $300 will easily best the image quality of a roof prism binocular (in every conceivable category) costing 3-4X as much $$$. Yes, you do lose a little bit of the "ruggedness" of construction, but it's not much. My dad and uncle both have porro prism Brunton Eternas which they have owned for at least 10 years and which have seen some rough hunts. They still are in perfect collimation and give bright, clear images that surpass many of the newest roofs. Drop your precious roof prism down that same granite cliff and they won't be in allignment either. 8-P

My experience is that hunters as a general rule (yes, there are some exceptions - and they tend to buy more expensive glass) simply don't judge optical performance anywhere near as critically as do birders.

If she is wanting the absolute best view possible and cannot or will not spend the $$$ necessary to buy the best roofs, she should absolutely look to one of the better porro prism models. (In fact, if she wants the absolute best view possible, she should only look at the best porros and bypass the roof prisms alltogether.)

BTW, Cabela's still sells the B&L Discoverer porro prism binoculars for a steal of a price (8X42 $160 or 10X42 $180. [They originally retailed for between $300 and $400 depending on where you bought them.]) I just bought the 10X model and am very happy with it. The image quality is superb (easily a match for any roof in the $800-$1000 range) and the FOV is better than I get from my 8X roof (341 ft.) The FOV of the 8X is fantastic at 430 ft.) What's even better; it's waterproof, fogproof, nitrogen purged, has their RainGaurd coatings, and has a lifetime gaurantee. There are of course, many (o.k. maybe not "many") other porro prism options to choose from and for birding, where finding is not the ultimate task of the binocular (as it is in hunting) but rather is only the first step in viewing, identifying, classifying,and enjoying the image of a hopefully very rare bird, she is going to be much better off with a porro.

Did I make it clear that I think porros are superior tools? o:D

[denco@comcast.n]

A good friend dropped her porros at Yosemite this weekend and they are now out of whack. So I'm advising her on her replacement pair. Budget is $300 and she is used to 8x42 porros. In my most recent email to her I said this:



So, if she goes with option b), what are the best porros under $300?

-chuck

I would strongly suggest you spend at least a $1000.00 and get the Zeiss FL 10x42 but if you really have only $300.00 to spend get the Leopold Wind River 10x50 or the Canon IS 10x30. Canons are a little better.

Dennis

[Robert Ellis]

Denco, the FL is not the answer to every question. The jump from $300 to $1000 is pretty big, and for most people even $300 is a huge investment.

[ceasar]

Get the Nikon 8 x 30 E2's. They are kind of homely and their E.R., at 14mm or so, is a bit on the short side but their optics and rugged construction put them in the first tier with bins costing a full grand more. Their 8.8 degree FOV might be an industry standard for a first class bin. CA is almost non-existent. Remarkable in a bin with such a large FOV.

Try them out first and pay close attention to the leatherette covering to make sure it is solidly glued down. They've had a bit of trouble with that but it doesn't affect their use. It's rather annoying though.

Perhaps the best thing about them is their ease of use and how natural it is to point them "dead on" with a little practice. Fiddling with the center focus is minimal and becomes instinctive after a bit of use. Front to back they are very short so you quickly learn to keep your little finger out of the picture, even if you have big hands, like I do.

If Nikon is seriously thinking of dropping this model then it is even more imperative to get one now!

[ZeNiTh-PbArM]

Hi,

every little bump and thump has the potential to throw porros slightly
out of whack - enough slightly-out-of-whack bumps, and suddenly your
image is off, or blurry
this is bloody nonense ; a while back i had a car accident during which the car rolled over 19 times. i was injured and the car went to the scrapyard but my porro bins on the passenger seat survived without even loosing collimation!
i havent tested ruggedness of roof prisms but looking at internal construction i can't figure out why prisms would be easier to move in porros than in roofs.

regards,
zp

[Pileatus]

With all of the info I've fed her, and with the Swift 8.5x44 porros in her short list of options this is what she said:


So she's thinking more seriously about roofs now than before. She's going to borrow my Monarch 10x42's for a day on Hawk Hill before she makes her final decision.

Do you guys buy what the Eagle Optics guy had to say?


In the $300 range you go for exceptional optical performance (porro...Nikon or Swift) and sacrifice a bit of durability and weatherproofing OR you go for average optical performance (roof) and get more durability and better weatherproofing.

I've seen so many old porros in use I'm amazed there's even a debate about them. Most bins sold today come with great warranties. The Nikon E2 will be repaired/replaced no matter what happens to it, as long as you can send what's left back to Nikon!

In this price range, it's really a choice between great optics and average optics.

John

[Robert Ellis]

Porro durability. I dropped a cased Action 8x40 on the floor in a shop yesterday. It came out of the case in perfect collimation, not bad for a $80 porro. If it had been put out of comission, Nikon woud've fixed it anyway.

[cab1024]

Having just bought my own big-money $300 binoculars in the Nikon Monarch 10x42, my next pair, should they be full-size 8x's, will very likely be porros. I personally like the retro look of the E2's and love the reputed amazing optical quality. I hope I can still get them once I'm allowed to spend that much on binos again.

And yes, $300 is a lot of money for most folks. I was just talking to a VP friend of mine last night who makes about 3 or 4 times as much money as I do and he gasped in amazement that my binoculars cost even $300. He could not believe that people pay $US1200-1500 for binoculars. Granted, we're bird people and thus freaks anyway.

But right now I can't quite figure why I would need two good pairs. Maybe the 10x for hawkwatching and the 8x for strolls through the park. I wouldn't want to leave good optics in a car. I've been carrying a pair of Canon 8x25a compacts in my bag to work everyday, and haven't needed them yet. There are very few birds on the subway.

BTW, if you have any desire to read about my Monarch experience thus far, my latest post at my Birdlog (http://www.chuckbaldwin.com/birdlog/) rambles on into the night about them.

[Jonathan B.]

I was just talking to a VP friend of mine last night who makes about 3 or 4 times as much money as I do and he gasped in amazement that my binoculars cost even $300. He could not believe that people pay $US1200-1500 for binoculars. Granted, we're bird people and thus freaks anyway.

And I suppose he doesn't drive some absurdly expensive car, or have golf clubs, or skis, or a boat, or something else representing a stupider obsession?

[Otto McDiesel]

I was just talking to a VP friend of mine last night who makes about 3 or 4 times as much money as I do and he gasped in amazement that my binoculars cost even $300. He could not believe that people pay $US1200-1500 for binoculars. Granted, we're bird people and thus freaks anyway.


That kind of people will spend $3.50 on a cup of StarScheiße coffee, $30 on restaurants, and $10-20 on gasoline for their SUV. Everyday. They probably have a house with a lawn ($200 water bill, not to mention the loss of biodiversity, water, and the pollution). Their house will have a $20,000 kitchen, but they never cook, and an assortment of dinning rooms, media rooms, sun rooms, play rooms, breakfast rooms, and so on, but they are never home. They will spend $500 for a DVD system in their Chevy Suburbans so that they would not have to talk to their kids when they drive them from soccer practice to ballet to karate to girlscouts to church to horseriding to ...
give me a break!!!!
If a $3000 binocular comes out, i will consider buying. I am too poor to spend my money on poor quality products.

[FrankD]

That kind of people will spend $3.50 on a cup of StarScheiße coffee, $30 on restaurants, and $10-20 on gasoline for their SUV. Everyday. They probably have a house with a lawn ($200 water bill, not to mention the loss of biodiversity, water, and the pollution). Their house will have a $20,000 kitchen, but they never cook, and an assortment of dinning rooms, media rooms, sun rooms, play rooms, breakfast rooms, and so on, but they are never home. They will spend $500 for a DVD system in their Chevy Suburbans so that they would not have to talk to their kids when they drive them from soccer practice to ballet to karate to girlscouts to church to horseriding to ...
give me a break!!!!
If a $3000 binocular comes out, i will consider buying. I am too poor to spend my money on poor quality products.

Whoa there Otto. Tell me how you really feel about this issue....;O) Anyway, you were way off. It is more like $90 on restarants, $50 to fill up their SUV (Lexus, Mercedes or BMW by the way) and several acres of "lawn" as it were. ;O)

I am too poor to spend my money on poor quality products.


I loved that statement.

I can sympathize with cab though. I bought my first pair of Monarchs a few years ago and considered them "high end" and a huge investment for something so "trivial" as a pair of binoculars. I say that "tongue in cheek" as I personally value my bins much more so than most but can remember a time not that long ago when such an investment would have seemed like sheer folly to me.

To answer your question cab, buying a second set of quality bins makes alot of sense. What happens if one pair is damaged and you would like to go birding? Do you just use binoculars with a less than desirable view (ie the compacts you mentioned)? Or would you rather have a second set of equal quality so that you can continue to enjoy your hobby (or obsession) to the extent that you did previously?

I know how I would answer that. ;O)

In addition, having a second set of quality bins also may make it more enjoyable for someone else to bird with you. I can think of at least a half dozen occasions when having my second set with me allowed someone to be introduced to birding in general and also enhanced the birding experience as well.

[cab1024]

That kind of people will spend $3.50 on a cup of StarScheiße coffee, $30 on restaurants, and $10-20 on gasoline for their SUV. Everyday. They probably have a house with a lawn ($200 water bill, not to mention the loss of biodiversity, water, and the pollution). Their house will have a $20,000 kitchen, but they never cook, and an assortment of dinning rooms, media rooms, sun rooms, play rooms, breakfast rooms, and so on, but they are never home. They will spend $500 for a DVD system in their Chevy Suburbans so that they would not have to talk to their kids when they drive them from soccer practice to ballet to karate to girlscouts to church to horseriding to ...
give me a break!!!!
If a $3000 binocular comes out, i will consider buying. I am too poor to spend my money on poor quality products.
Nice generalization. Actually he's one of the more frugal people I know. He just happens to sell expensive parts for manufacturing superconductors. I imagine that carries a generous commission. He also rents -- and has convinced me that to buy a house in the San Francisco area might be the biggest financial mistake a person could make right now. Ever seen a 980 square foot house that costs $650,000? They look just like 980 square foot houses that cost $75,000. But I digress. He also still uses the same Pentium 3 computer he bought 5 years ago, not seeing any reason to replace something that functions perfectly well.

Maybe that kind of people are just responsible and/or practical.

And I'm sure he'd buy a porro...

[cab1024]

To answer your question cab, buying a second set of quality bins makes alot of sense. What happens if one pair is damaged and you would like to go birding? Do you just use binoculars with a less than desirable view (ie the compacts you mentioned)? Or would you rather have a second set of equal quality so that you can continue to enjoy your hobby (or obsession) to the extent that you did previously?
Obviously I would prefer to use equal quality bins if mine get sent back to Nikon. But from what I hear it takes about 3 weeks. I can survive on the bins I used for years with no problem for that amount of time.

In addition, having a second set of quality bins also may make it more enjoyable for someone else to bird with you. I can think of at least a half dozen occasions when having my second set with me allowed someone to be introduced to birding in general and also enhanced the birding experience as well.
Most people have never looked through good (even $300) binoculars before and would never even know they were looking through bins that you wouldn't let your dog use. They I fully agree that it would enhance their experience. I let someone behind me look through my Monarchs at a recent outdoor music festival, and she exclaimed, "Wow! Those are great binoculars."

I suspect that the only people who would even know about quality binoculars would be birders, hunters & outdoorsmen, nautical people, some military people, and astonomy hobbyists. Everyone else has the binoculars that happened to be for sale at the moment they decided they needed some binoculars. Maybe I'm generalizing ;-)

[cab1024]

She looked at the Swift Ultra Lite 8x42 porros and was amazed by the stunning view. They did not have the 8.5x44 in stock. She loved the weigtlessness of them too.

Should she make a point of seeing the 8.5x44 first, or just go with the 8x42's. The 8.5's are $50US more expensive.

[solentbirder]

She looked at the Swift Ultra Lite 8x42 porros and was amazed by the stunning view. They did not have the 8.5x44 in stock. She loved the weigtlessness of them too.

Should she make a point of seeing the 8.5x44 first, or just go with the 8x42's. The 8.5's are $50US more expensive.

If she likes the Ultra Lites I'd say go for them. They're good binoculars from a reputable make. It sounds like they suit her perfectly from a handling perspective (she feels they are weightless) and this is very important for long term use. The 8.5x44 porro can be quite bulky for people with smaller hands.
Hope that helps.
John

[Otto McDiesel]

The 8.5x44 porro can be quite bulky for people with smaller hands.

John

We had the 8.5x44 ED porro for a while. It was a fantastic binocular (that is an understatement, really). It belonged to my wife. However, she has small hands, and the Swift did not fit her properly. The Swift roof 8.5x44 don't follow the "stay away from cheap roofs" rule, because they are very nice (not exactly cheap either).
The Nikon EII 8x30 is a big "wow".

[ceasar]

I agree with everything you said. The Swift 8.5 x 44's are great but too big. I can palm a basketball but I find them too big for me. I have trouble reaching the focus wheel. I can imagine what folks with smaller hands go through. And the Nikon 8 x 30 E2's are indeed a big WOW!

[cab1024]

I will pass all of this along. Thanks everybody!

[albatross02]

Hi,

I heard Docter has excellent price/performance level.
10x40 is not possible for a new under 300 US$.
For this price maybe 10x26.
Docter is former Carl Zeiss Jena and produces all binos in Germany.

www.docter-germany.com

Best regards
Dieter