[dustyview]

Hi all. I've read some reviews about the Minox BV (and BL) here and on other sites and am curious if anyone has done direct comparisons with the Chinese bins that have been talked about so much. When the BVs are on sale, they compete price-wise with the ZRS, Diamondback, and EO's yet-to-be-released Atlas Skyking. They are described as being phase-coated and having a brand-specific Minobright prism coating. Does anyone know if this is silver or dielectric (or something else)? I'm assuming that the BV line is also made in China.

Has anyone had both one of the 42mm BVs and a ZRS or Diamondback (or Promaster or Hawke)? Thanks.

[Steve C]

dusty,

Minox has more recently admitted to at least the presence of some Chinese glass in some of their glass. One that received some comments on another forum was a question on the Minox 13x56 BV asking how much Chinese glass constituted a Chinese binocular.

Minox makes pretty decent binoculars from what I've seen, but the more expensive models in the 43mm class have pretty narrow fov for the price.

Personally, aside from a marketer's invention, I have no idea of what minobright may be.

Now I wonder how far away we might be from the question of "is my less expensive Chinese binocular as good as my more expensive Chinese binocular? The'rey both Chinese."

[Kevin Purcell]

A now expired page in the Google cache at Minox says

Another key milestone is mirroring the roof prisms with MinoBright technology. This silver-baring coating guarantees up to a 99,9 percent improved efficiency of the reflection at the mirror surface. This is yet another improvement of the light transmission within the overall optical system of the HG-binoculars.

So it's silver mirror not dielectric but I don't actually have any idea what their claim means. Silver reflection peaks out in the deep red (700nm) at around 98% or so (and drops off towards the blue).

Interesting that the MINOX HG use silver mirror rather than a dielectric mirror.

I suspect it's marketing "parallel placement" to Swarobright: to make you think they're similar. Swarobright is a dielectric mirror coating with higher flatter transmission.

[FrankD]

Isn't it funny how often we similar terms used in marketing to cause mental associations? This would be a perfect example.

Still, up until the most recent crop of Chinese bins, silver prism coating was reserved for roofs no less than $500. Now at the $200 price point I think it definitely improves the optical performance of these bins.

To answer the original question, no, I have not compared the Minox with the Diamondbacks, ZRS, etc... Based on broad experience with other Chinese bins in this price range I would expect them to perform at a similar level optically. I will say though that in my limited experience with Minox bins ( 3 or 4 bins) the quality control seems very, very good.

[dustyview]

Now it seems like the BV doesn't have the minobright coating. Waiting to hear directly from Minox in Germany.....

EDIT: Al mirror coatings (from Minox GB).