Here it is!
They're here! The binoculars arrived double-boxed on the day they were promised. I got them from Adorama via Buy.com for $49. My first impression was pretty favorable, especially once I saw the giant oculars (a fetish brought on by my needing eyeglasses recently). I decided they were keepers, so I am doing a thorough review. For the price, they could have been truly horrible junk. I would say that they are far from that!
I checked them out on my lunch break and after work, mostly on trees and bushes in the area. Here are my observations:
Construction: inspires confidence. The hinge arms are solid metal (aluminum?) and beefy. The tension was good and stiff. The tension is maintained with the usual hinge screw, but it has two tiny set screws to keep it in place. Nice touch! You may notice the cover is upside down - I did that when I put it back on. The prisms appear to be glued into the body with black glue, and glued to each other with a glob of clear silicone. The body screws are big and beefy. I think they will last a long time.
Fit and finish: this is where the Celestrons fall down. There was a metal shaving visible in one barrel out of the light path, and I pulled another shaving out of the focusing knob. There are three tool marks on one eyepiece. The rubber armor is nice - not too soft. I think it will last. There are cheesy plastic rings on the lens barrels that have sharp edges. The eyecups unscrewed while I was playing with them and one fell off. I screwed it down tighter and I think it will not cause any problems. The red Celestron sticker already fell off too. There was a bit of dust visible in the body - they were obviously not assembled in a clean room! Overall, the impression is functional, rather than exquisite.
Ergonomics: Excellent. I have small hands, and the feel is just right. The engineers obviously put some thought into the shape of the glass. The focusing was stiff but not too much, and was much easier to focus into the body than out (air pressure differential?). I like holding them with one hand and two. They are light and handy.
Glass: It appears that all surfaces are multicoated. I get nothing but pink and green reflections from the lenses and prisms on both ends. The grinding and coatings appear first-rate. I'm not going to scrub them to check the durability.
Accessories: The Celestrons ship with a decent (not great) strap with neoprene padding, and thankfully no inch-high letters advertising the brand. lens caps are soft rubber and fit well. There was also a cleaning cloth. Finally, it comes in a truly laughable bathtub of a case. You could put three of these little guys in there. No padding. Bleah. I don't use lens caps, but I do use a case, so I'm going to have to improvise something.
Eyecups: twist-up. They have 3 detents that appear to do nothing, and while they will stay at full extension, I think they will collapse during use. I keep them all the way down anyway.
Eye relief: Good for glasses. I have plastic frames, and I can just see the whole field. I might have liked one more mm, but they are fine. No blackouts.
Close focus: about 10 feet. This was longer than advertised, but good for a porro. No double vision at that distance.
FOV: I looked at a bookshelf at 10 feet distance, and could easily see 16" worth of books. By wiggling my eyes around, I could see another 1/2". By this very crude method, I calculate 400-413 feet at 1000 yards. Their claim of 430 feet may very well be accurate.
View: Here we are! The view was very comfortable. Collimation was good, and I am sensitive to misalignment. Sharpness was very good in the center. I could easily discern spider silk 50 feet away, and individual pine needles about 100 yards away. Viper guy said they were as sharp as his 8x42 viper (but opined that twilights visibility would not be as good, and noticed the overall cheaper feel of the Celestrons). The sweet spot was about 60% of the view, and it was biased toward the inside. I think this is good because with a porro, you will be using the inside of the view more. Outside of the sweet spot, the view was softer, but still quite useful. The lack of sharpness was not noticeable in normal use. The last 5% was rather squished with pincushion and is good only for noticing movement. With the wide angle, I did not notice the distortion at the edge unless I was looking for it.
Flare: visible against the light as a light crescent opposite the direction of the light source. As much as I tried, I would say that it never reduced the subjective contrast more than 25%, when looking at a dark subject with very bright backlighting. There was also an artifact in the inner bottom corner of both barrels with the extreme backlighting. I once saw a ghosted image in that artifact, so I suspect it was some stray light going through the prisms. This artifact was readily apparent, but since it was in the corner of the view and not very bright, it did not bother me. Again, this was during the worst backlighting viewing conditions I could find. Normal viewing produced no flare.
CA: not a problem. With the extreme backlighting, I may have seen a slight and small yellow/green aura around dark objects, but I was really trying to see it. Mostly, I'd say it was absent.
Color: neutral. The contrast was not “eye-popping” as some binoculars are said to have – just nice. It looked like things were just closer. Very natural looking. Looking into shadows showed good resolution of dark details.
Conclusion: Now that I have finished this, I have to remember that these are $50 binos! I am more than pleased at what I got. I would have been happy if these had been $100 binos. At $200, I would be criticising the fit and finish more, but still liking the view
