NexOptic Double Take digital binoculars (1 Viewer)

There was a bit of digital binoculars discussion that cam up quite recently in a thread here. This item showed up on my Google News feed, so I thought I'd pass it along.

It looks like there is a ways to go yet, but with this thing being powered by Android, and thus having access to the Google App store, apps like the excellent iBird Pro and many other nature oriented apps, may point a future direction. Some will find more appeal here, and others quite a bit less, but the door to digital binoculars seems to be opened (however primitive things like this may be), and we will go (or perhaps eventually be dragged) down the hallway.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEagRgLEjwU
https://phandroid.com/2019/01/07/nexoptic-reimagines-binoculars-with-the-android-powered-doubletake/

Binocular may not be the best suited name here either

Thanks for the heads-up, Steve. Digital binoculars will be purely utilitarian disposable tools. They won't have the beauty and heritage of many vintage binoculars or even some current ones.

Neat stuff....BUT....I think for them to succeed they are gonna have to make them comfortable to hold and manipulate. That square box looks clumsy as all get out. Take out your phone and try to operate it like you would a set of nice binos....there’s no comparison.
Besides, what features do these have that the Canon IS binos don’t have? HD Video? The ability to share with a phone via Bluetooth? I’d be surprised if these things didn’t have image stabilization.

Seems like Canon could tweak a few things here and there and have the same thing. There’s another company that make IS binos too, right? I can’t recall the others that I’ve seen.

I think it’s a good first step. They’re a LONG WAY from taking over the perch that binos have had for decades. Look forward to the future to see what’s coming.

These things certainly have that disposable look to them. I'd be interested in looking them over for no other reason than simple curiosity. They have to be pretty crude, but so were Ignazio Porro's first attempts at a binocular. The first smart phones and digital cameras were pretty crude. They have come a long ways. Once technology opens a door leading down a new path, that path is taken. Digital binoculars, or whatever they come to be called, will be no different. What the digital binocular equivalent of the iPhone will look like, I have no idea, but it will shame these NexOptics Double Takes.

While these are rudimentary/crude, it is good to see someone making such innovations. Although I'm not sure digital binoculars will completely replace analog for some time, I have to imagine they are the future - just look at photography, how many times do you see someone wielding an analog camera? And if they can shove 90x optical zoom into a waterproof, $1000 camera I have to imagine there are ways to produce digital binoculars that just aren't being explored much until now.

Justin

Incorporate a sharing app with a like button and it will sell like funnel cake at the county fair.

Pileatus said:

Incorporate a sharing app with a like button and it will sell like funnel cake at the county fair.

Click to expand...

Then you'd just have people start using it to look at and share pictures of their fancy dinners and whatnot...

Justin

Pileatus said:

Incorporate a sharing app with a like button and it will sell like funnel cake at the county fair.

Click to expand...

That is likely to ring pretty true. That sharing app seems to strip many people of their common sense. However we face the dilemma of do we get more young people into birding/nature observations with gadget things like this, which are (regrettably) becoming part and parcel of their lives, or the old fashioned way with two tubes of glass and a bird manual. I'm extremely unlikely to ever get rid of any good binocular, but I like to try to keep up with tech to a certain degree. I can see a certain appeal of taking a picture of the bird, hitting the button to bring up iBird Pro and finalizing your ID. Yeah and some will just have to share their find. However look at Cornell Ornithology Labs Merlin ID and we see much of the same approach.

These things apparently have two modes, 2.5 and 10x, a quad core processor, a 12 MP camera, and a full HD display (1980x1040) display.

https://nexoptic.com/