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ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

made in Japan? made in Germany? made in China?? Minox and Olympus models (1 Viewer)

The Olympus EXWP series are an extremely old design, hence the relative shortcomings against more modern offerings, if the more recent Minox offering is indeed as close as you think, it may well be a licensed copy. I suppose that it is even possible that Olympus sold excess spares to Minox for manufacture in Germany, they were busy raising capital a while back.

For a design that has been around for over 10 years (it last won awards back in Feb 2003 and Amazon Us claim a first listing back in 2001 I believe) I would have assumed that the original batches were Japanese made. Most Olympus items for domestic use are made in China these days and clearly so labelled, it might be quite interesting to find out when Olympus last manufactured a batch of EXWPs?

The EXPS I range that runs in parallel with the EXWP as the Olympus range specifically marketed for nature use has for some time been labelled as Made in China or has no marking of origin.

As for sample variation the 8x version occasionally had CA issues, an approach to Olympus would get a swap for a pair that were perfect. They were a nice mid range binocular in their day and are still very useable - unlike the 8x22 version which was just plain horrible imho from day one.

Anyway we seem to have enough trouble in Europe these days understanding the origins of our basic food, so we stand no chance at all with our binoculars.
 
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Having checked further reference models of Olympus binoculars it appears that all those checked are labelled as manufactured in China other than two old examples of EXWP that were made in Japan. It seems highly likely that your Olympus binoculars were manufactured before Olympus consumer manufacturing was transferred to China. I cannot comment on Minox manufacturing, and I have never seen the relevant Minox disassembled so I cannot comment either on similarities of construction.
 
maybe the olympus was old stock, but I´d rather guess that different companies order from the same big chinese manufacturer and put a slightly different plastic shell around with their logo on it...
 
Many do - but judging from the facts Minox may have Olympus did not with the model you own. If you had picked just about anyother Olympus binocular you would have probably been correct, especially the newer models.
 
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