Zen Ray ED....initial impressions (1 Viewer)

[falcondude]

Frank, can you post a picture of binocular back? I want to know how much thumb indent it has. Thanks for doing this for all of us. Mine is scheduled to ship next coming Monday. They also refunded the shipping charge back to my credit card. So my 8x43 will come in for $359 shipped. :t:

 

[FrankD]

Here you go...and to add two further observations.

One, the close focus, for me, appears to be just under 6 feet. I can look straight down with them and focus clearly on my toes. Excellent.

Two, upon further evaluation the level of edge sharpness/size of the sweet spot seems to be very good. I would place it as equivalent to the Meopta's and possibly at the same level as the Swaro EL.

This and several other small issues have me wondering if we really aren't seeing an evolution of this design. In my opinion the eyecups and several image quality characteristics seem to be slight improvements over the Promaster ED without sacrificing anything I have yet to find.

 

[falcondude]

Here you go...and to add two further observations.

One, the close focus, for me, appears to be just under 6 feet. I can look straight down with them and focus clearly on my toes. Excellent.

Two, upon further evaluation the level of edge sharpness/size of the sweet spot seems to be very good. I would place it as equivalent to the Meopta's and possibly at the same level as the Swaro EL.

This and several other small issues have me wondering if we really aren't seeing an evolution of this design. In my opinion the eyecups and several image quality characteristics seem to be slight improvements over the Promaster ED without sacrificing anything I have yet to find.

Frank, thank you for posting the picture. Now I just have to wait a few more days.

 

[bcl05]

Thanks for the write-up. I'm convinced - I just ordered a pair last night. Can't wait to get them in hand!

 

[FrankD]

To be fair, I would like to see two small improvements to make these truly Alpha competitive in terms of their physical design (their optics are already there in my opinion). One, I would like to see either the diopter moved to under the focusing knob or I would like to see a locking mechanism placed on it where it is. I hear the ZRS is going to have a locking diopter so it should not be that much of an issue to see it on the ED as well.

Two, though I believe the eyecups are an upgrade from the Promasters (shape and function) I would like to see them have that feel that only the Alphas do. I am not sur if that is because most of the Alphas utilize metal in their eycup design or if they just use tighter tolerances but either way I think it greatly adds to the perception and overall level of quality. There is nothing wrong with the eyecup design now as it is entirely functional but if I wanted to improve upon something then these would be my suggestions.

 

[Kevin Purcell]

My Zen Ray EDs (an 8x and a 10x) both arrived on Saturday by priority mail just before I headed out the door to a (much delayed) Christmas party. So I put them to one side.

I also avoided reading any of this thread before I'd played with the Zen Ray bins myself.

Today with beautiful clear sky, bright sun and 44F (in January?) I got a chance to give them a first run through. As I'm feeling a bit "sensitive" from the party I'll just give some first impressions.

Speaking of focus, when I initially pulled them out you could tell that they had been sitting in the cold for some time as the focusing knob was stiffer to turn than anything I remember (except maybe the Vanguard). This was initially a concern to me as I have memories of comments surrounding the stiff focus on the Vortex Razor initially. I immediately wanted to write them off as "less than adequate" for this reason but changed my mind after more extended usage. The focusing tension was still fairly stiff in the 15 degree F weather but I was able to turn it satisfactorily after working on it for a minute or two. As I sit typing this I am working the focusing knob again. It is much smoother at room temperature but still is a bit stiffer than what I remember the Promaster and possibly the Hawke. I do not believe anyone would have a major issue with this but I thought it was worthy of being mentioned.

I noticed this too.

I played with the 10x Zen Ray ED first in the apartment. Racked the focus back and forth and got a "metal scrape" feel and sound. "Oh, that doesn't sound good". I tried it a few more times and got the same sound. So when I took them to the park bench to give them an initial tryout I was rather surprised when I couldn't get the "scrape" to occur again. The focuser action also loosened up a bit too. I suspect some grease needed to be moved around the focuser mechanism (and perhaps in the push-rods and cams).

Using the 10x focuser at 44F I'd rate it as stiffer than the now well used Hawke and Promaster. In fact I noticed the Hawke focuser is stiffer than the Promaster focuser. I'd not paid attention to that before. So there is perhaps some common ground with the Zen-ray design. It's usable but not quick and not lightweight. I'll report more on this as the bin is used to see if it loosens up a bit more. For reference the Promaster is stiffer than the Zeiss Victory 8x40 focuser I've been using the most recently.

With 8x Zen Ray I have the focuser is very stiff and pretty much too stiff for birding. It takes a lot of effort for one figure to turn it and you can't quickly follow a bird with it.

I thought an issue might be part of the knob rubbing on the rubber armor but I suspect this isn't the case but the tolerance here is pretty tight (about the thickness of a piece of paper). For example you can slide a dollar bill into the gap without effort but you can feel the friction of the knob on the dollar bill but it doesn't increase the effort to turn the knob by a large amount. The dollar bill will move back and forth so there is some friction there.

I've been working the 8x focuser back and forth but it doesn't seem to be loosening much. The force to rotate clockwise (to infinity) is slightly larger than the force required to rotate it counter-clockwise.

So I can continue to test with the focuser like this but I wouldn't want to seriously bird with a focuser this stiff.

This focuser mechanism seems very similar to the Hawke with a "non-rotating" badge. A little different from the more conventional knob on the Promaster.

So obviously I'd like to hear from the other testers about the focuser stiffness on their bins. Is this just sample variation early in the production run?

A quick look in the park seems to indicate there is something slightly better about the view of the Zen Ray ED compared to the Hawke ED or Promaster ED. Perhaps a little brighter. In this case there may be a very slightly better brightness: Zen Ray ED > Hawke ED > Promaster ED. But this is a small fraction and I think it may not be noticed without ABCing the bins. They are close.

Sharpness seems about equal (just on a casual check) between all of the Chinese EDs.

This is just the first part of my notes ... I shall post more later.

 

[Kevin Purcell]

Frank, can you post a picture of binocular back? I want to know how much thumb indent it has. Thanks for doing this for all of us.

The thumb indents are deeper but about the same size as the thumb indents on the Hawke and Promaster. This actually improves the grip of the Zen Ray compared to the other two bins. It give a more "positive" indent. Some may like that (other's may not ... I guess it depends on how it matchs up with your hands).

I can see the shape of the metal just under the indents. The armor is quite thin at this point they've removed some to make the armor thinner at the indents. So I think they're at about the limit for this design.

The armor thickness on the barrels is thinner than the Hawke too (I think). I find it easy to be able to wrap my fingers and thumb around the barrel for a solid "O" grip without touching the other barrel with the backs of my fingers. I can do this on the Promaster too but not quite on the Hawke for my 65mm IPD (that's the average male IPD). As it seems one of the natural grips for an open-bridge bin its nice that it works for me ("normal sized biggish male hands").

Finally I prefer a smooth barrel (like the Promaster) but I find the rounded bumps are a bit more pleasant than the Hawke's diamond pattern on my bare hands.

 

[bobcat]

halo?

did you see scattered light issues like in the hawke?

 

[Kevin Purcell]

did you see scattered light issues like in the hawke?

I've not pushed it that hard yet. But I'll be looking.

 

[falcondude]

The thumb indents are deeper but about the same size as the thumb indents on the Hawke and Promaster. This actually improves the grip of the Zen Ray compared to the other two bins. It give a more "positive" indent. Some may like that (other's may not ... I guess it depends on how it matchs up with your hands).

I can see the shape of the metal just under the indents. The armor is quite thin at this point they've removed some to make the armor thinner at the indents. So I think they're at about the limit for this design.

The armor thickness on the barrels is thinner than the Hawke too (I think). I find it easy to be able to wrap my fingers and thumb around the barrel for a solid "O" grip without touching the other barrel with the backs of my fingers. I can do this on the Promaster too but not quite on the Hawke for my 65mm IPD (that's the average male IPD). As it seems one of the natural grips for an open-bridge bin its nice that it works for me ("normal sized biggish male hands").

Finally I prefer a smooth barrel (like the Promaster) but I find the rounded bumps are a bit more pleasant than the Hawke's diamond pattern on my bare hands.

Thanks for following up my question with such a detailed description. In your previous post on brightness, do we see a steady evolution on those ED binoculars? On the stiffness, I am curious whether it is a greasing issue?

 

[falcondude]

To be fair, I would like to see two small improvements to make these truly Alpha competitive in terms of their physical design (their optics are already there in my opinion). One, I would like to see either the diopter moved to under the focusing knob or I would like to see a locking mechanism placed on it where it is. I hear the ZRS is going to have a locking diopter so it should not be that much of an issue to see it on the ED as well.

Better yet, a locking diopter placed under the focusing knob. That will be totally cool.

 

[DHB]

The focus on my ProM at 10 degrees was VERY stiff also. Not unusable but difficult, I had my 10x42 Trinovid out at same time and it had no issues, smooth. But for the price I'm still happy.

Dave

 

[Kevin Purcell]

In your previous post on brightness, do we see a steady evolution on those ED binoculars?

Perhaps. The manufacturers may be "getting their eye in" and tweaking some of their production processes. Coatings (both AR and mirror) may be slightly better. These might be from another OEM (though I wouldn't bet on it).

These are certainly no worse than the other Chinese EDs (sorry if that sounds like faint praise but I mean it in a precise way of setting the lower bound) and may be slightly better. Judging these small differences is problematic (and one can get too enthusiastic about the new "Holy Grail").

That said the view through these bins is very nice.

I'll say more about this as I use the bins more and more.

On the stiffness, I am curious whether it is a greasing issue?

I mailed Charles at Zen-ray after posting the comment and got a response quickly (on Sunday!).

He said they've noticed a similar stiffness problem on a couple of other pairs in the shipment and have tracked down the problem to different assemblers tightening the tensioning in the knob differently. It's not a knob/armor interference issue.

He said they didn't prescreen the review bins. Just grabbed the retail boxes and mailed them out to the reviewers so we are getting an unbiased sample of the first production run of bins with all the variations that reveals. Quite a gutsy (or silly!) thing to do, IMHO, but we are seeing what the first batch of customers would see.

He said they're modifying their assembly procedure (or perhaps making sure everyone does the same thing!) and with the second run of bins arriving next Monday they should have fixed this issue. He'll be sending me another pair of the 8x43 from the second batch for me to try out.

The joy of using early production bins

 

[bcl05]

Neat. From their emails to me mine will be shipped next Monday. Perhaps mine will be from that second run. Can't wait to get my hands on them...

 

[FrankD]

I have to admit that I did have a strong concern on the focuser inititally but after extended usage over the last 48 hours I can report that my unit has loosened up nicely. I have noticed varying comments from a perfectly smooth unit to now an intolerable one. I am glad they were able to track the problem down so quickly and remedy it. That is the type of issue that can make or break a bin (thinking original Vortex Razor sample here).

 

[Kevin Purcell]

I agree. I like the color combination. It is striking and distinctive without being too "glitzy".

I like the dark green armor and the black powder epoxy coated metal (I think: the same as the Hawke) too. Blends in and looks pleasing. The armor would look better without the bumps. Less is more.

But the branding badges are a bit "too much" for me. One thing that bugs me is they have a glossy plastic bubble (Aqua in Mac OS X terms) look especially on the tripod adaptor with a silver R that catches the sun and glints. I can't imagine either hunters or birder being too happy with that.

The other issue is the contrast between the red Z and the silver 'EN' makes the logo difficult to read. I keep seeing the bins as EN bins on the focuser. Just silly if you are promoting a brand. This is particularly noticeable on the badge on the bridge: EN-RAY is pretty clear. Whatever.

Not a huge problem but it could have been better done. Hawke seem to have got this right with plain silver lettering: readable but not too glinty.

 

[Kevin Purcell]

I have to admit that I did have a strong concern on the focuser inititally but after extended usage over the last 48 hours I can report that my unit has loosened up nicely. I have noticed varying comments from a perfectly smooth unit to now an intolerable one. I am glad they were able to track the problem down so quickly and remedy it. That is the type of issue that can make or break a bin (thinking original Vortex Razor sample here).

My right index finger (my trackpad finger!) is "annoyed" (RSI like but not painful) from messing with the Zen Ray 8x43 stiff focuser yesterday. I went at it rather too much thinking it might loosen up. It didn't. The 10x seems OK but perhaps stiffer than I'd like but curiously a little less stiff than my Eagle Optics Raptor 10x42 (aka Vixen Foresta) porro.

This is something I've not paid attention to before but it's an important part of the ergonomics of a bin.

I think I've now become sensitive to this so there are two definitions of "slow focus". The first is the usual one lots of angular rotation to move from close focus to infinity. The second on is how much force is needed which is roughly saying the same as how fast can you turn the focuser. They're two different things but can interact in an interesting ways.

For example, a focuser that needs a lot of angular rotation and where the focuser knob can move quickly might seem smooth and fluid. But a focuser with a little angular rotation and a fast knob might seem "too quick" and "imprecise".

So there is a distinction with "amount" of turning and "rate" of turning.

Perhaps the ideal combinations for birders (I can see people at Swaro, Leica and Zeiss spending hours on getting this right) are either small amount and a slower rate or a larger amount with faster rate.

I've been using a Zeiss Victory 8x40 a lot recently and they seem to get it right and I think that's critical to why I like them (because they aren't as quite sharp as the Chinese EDs). The rate is faster than any of the Chinese EDs. And the amount is a bit smaller (but not so much as to make it twitchy). This makes a good combination for birding in the field as one slews the focus to find the wren in the bushes 3m away then the Western Meadowlark in the tree about 70m away.

Add it to the list of tests to try!

 

[Kevin Purcell]

On another thread

If the balance is as nice as the Zen Ray then it may be a keeper.

The Zen Ray ED seems pretty good in the hand. I think Frank takes it a little far when he says a light as his Monarchs (they're a few ounces heavier). I'm pretty sure he said that though I can't find the quote.

But it does have decent balance (neither objective or eyepiece heavy). I find the deeper indents help the grip (a bit more than the PM and the Hawkes) as my thumbs land there and I end up with a "Leica" grip (well one could call it the Bushnell grip because the bins are the same shape) with the sides of the bins landing on the palm where the fingers join it and the fingers folded over the top of the bin. It's not the most obvious grip but I've found it works really well on most roofs given a very stable grip. It's rather different from the porro grip. A photo would be easier to show this!

This balance is the same for the Hawke and the Promaster and I think it's a function of the common enclosure they all seem to use. It's the same size (and I presume inside has the same distribution bits) in each binocular. The enclosure also has some nice curves just below the focuser that really match where ones fingers land (especially with the grip described above) so it can be very comfortable to hold when your finger isn't on the focuser (though that might be more of a hunter's stance with everything of interest at infinity).

The other thing that might make it seem lighter is the strap. Let me explain ...

The provided strap is long as FrankD pointed out but so was the Hawke. I put mine together long as I prefer to wear full size bins "sash" or "bandoleer" style across the shoulder. Then I put it on and the bin dangles just below my hip. Interesting. I'm 5 feet 10 inches. Not tall. I shortened it up as much as it can go: the QR catches get in the way of this and got it to dangle belt height for a shoulder carry as I like it. I can carry a bin like this all day this without even noticing it. When I need it I pull it around to the front.

But people who prefer to neck carry their bins (most?) are going to be disappointed. I don't see a way of doing this with the strap apart from cutting the strap above the QR. What ZR needs is a short neck strap that matches the QR connectors (and perhaps shortening the distance from the bin lugs to the QR connectors. The Promaster provided strap (neck carry only) is the better option here. Or a third party strap.

The other things that bothers me about the strap is the connections around the QR connectors are made by welding the nylon fiber straps to themselves. I'm not sure how strong these connection are but it seems like a single point of failure that will bump the bin on the ground if it should fail. Another reason would swap out the strap for a third party strap.

It may seem like a minor issue but this sort of problem really does bug people. Plus if they swap out the branded strap ZR looses their branding (so they have skin in this game).

The rainguards are interesting too. At first I just though they were one of the two standard rainguards that seem to come with all the Chinese made bins. They have they closed loop on the left (same a PM but different from Hawke!) But after using them I realized these are a little different. They a bit thinner than the others and the piece that slips over the eyeguards is longer that the others. These are two interesting features. This seems to address the two conflicting requirements for eyeguards: to come of quickly when you need to take them off but not to fall off when you want them to stay on.

I've noticed amongst the rainguards I have that the ones that stay on best are the longer ones. They seem less likely to get knocked off. This even seems to be true of the hard plastic rainguards (e.g. that Pentax use). The shorter ones (Zeiss seems to be quite bad for me) are getting pulled off during a carry.

The don't seem likely to fall off or get pulled off in my use. A little more use and I'll see if they got the balance right.

One final point on the hardware.

I lost one of the Always On(tm) Objective Tethers on my first birding walk on a sunny morning in the mid-30s. Not quite Always On

This is the same problem Steve C had with his Promaster on a fall hunting trip. I noticed it on both the Promaster and Hawke using them indoors but leaving them by an open window on a cold day. I then moved the Hawke and one of the the covers fell off. The problem is that all of the Chinese EDs seem to have these covers as loose attachments with rather narrow tethers on the barrels. And as rubber expands in the cold (odd stuff) if you take it out on a cold day you are more likely to loose them.

My solution was to replace the provided covers on the Promaster with Bushnell Elite covers: they're inexpensive and a tighter fit so they don't fall off the barrels even in the cold.

 

[falcondude]

Thanks for another wonderful installment! At first, I was worried about the focus wheel after your report. It is good to know that they have addressed that issue. Now I cannot wait. What's QR? I was looking at their CAD image of ZRS binoculars. There is a big gap between the cap and the tripod thread rod. Do they plan to attach objective lens cover there, as some of the Alpen binoculars do?

 

[Kevin Purcell]

Thanks for another wonderful installment! At first, I was worried about the focus wheel after your report. It is good to know that they have addressed that issue. Now I cannot wait. What's QR? I was looking at their CAD image of ZRS binoculars. There is a big gap between the cap and the tripod thread rod. Do they plan to attach objective lens cover there, as some of the Alpen binoculars do?

We'll see about the focus wheel fix when a replacement arrives from the second batch.

QR == Quick release.

The straps have two QR connectors (like a Fastex connector) in the strap. The idea is to swap out straps but I'm not sure the current design works. I beleive that you get a free extra strap ("Wait there's more ..." ) but if it's the same strap I don't see it working for neck wearers though you can chop one strap up.

Anyone else want to chime in on this? A real "neck wearer" might have a better point of view than me. I'm happy because it's long enough to wear sash-style but I prefer the Hawke strap to this one: simpler and fewer point of potential failure.

The tethers are the standard circular rubber loops that just go over the barrel and hold the objective covers in place by friction against the barrel. You see them on most current Chinese and Japanese bins. They aren't attached to the tripod screw mount like say the Pentax SP or Steiner objective covers do are (and I suspect the Alpen covers might do but I don't know that bin)