You get what you pay for...

[SwampStar]

Well...my (very) cheapie binoculars arrived this morning, and you really do get what you pay for. It's like looking through two coke bottles. They were out of the pack for five minutes before the right eyepiece fell off and the focus wheel is either stuck fast, or spins round on its own.

And they used the word 'outstanding' in the description!

I've learnt my lesson...I'm never spending less than a fiver on new binos again!

[Parus major]

I totally agree with you.

One this that confuses me is that people are happy to spend £1k on a mount, £700+ on a ota, £500+ on a guide system, get snobby about paying less than £200 for a single eyepiece and then buy and recomment landfill binoculars.

Perhaps it's the birdwatcher in my but you are really buying budget tat if you spend anything less than £90.

[BinocularSky]

At the risk of banging on about it, a half-way decent eyepiece costs around £40. A binocular consists of 2 eyepieces, 2 objectives, 2 focusers, 2 prism assemblies, and associated other tubing, hinges and associated gubbins. Just what quality do you expect from anything that costs less than 2 eyepieces?

[Photosbykev]

Buy it cheap buy it twice My above average 8 x30 binocs were £370 and they are six years old and have been used and abused daily without any faults and are still optically great. For a half decent pair I would budget on at least £100

[Capricorn]

And they used the word 'outstanding' in the description!

Surely you are not suggesting that they misled you in any way?

Had they said "optically inferior" would you have bought them.

I seem to recall buying a monocular about as good and for much the same price, being a simpler construction I pulled it apart and flocked the inside, blackened a few bits and rebuilt it. Works pretty good now.

The original glass coke bottles are probably collectors items now as well.

[SwampStar]

Okay, okay...aa

I wasn't expecting Carl Zeiss standard, but I thought I'd take a punt.

By the way...the 'less than a fiver' bit was a joke!

[s2moran]

Buy peanuts get peanuts and that applies to binoculars as well

[Mr Onions]

Sorry to hear of your problem.

BEWARE! even binoculars over £100 can be rubbish.

I paid £900 for my Zeiss 7x42FL's about 7 years ago,worth every penny.

Keep on saving as I did.

[perrin6]

best value binoculars I've known are my 7dayshop.com 10 X 42 which were £22 new but they don't seem to be available now. They also did a 50mm version but I dont know what they were like.

[SwampStar]

Buy peanuts get peanuts and that applies to binoculars as well

Think I would have preferred peanuts, to be honest. At least I could have done something with them!

So let's dedicate the rest of this thread to some ideas of what I can do with the toy binos I seem to have wasted ALMOST A FIVER on...

[DC_MPA]

That stinks, I hope you can find the right binoculars for your needs. I recently entered backyard stargazing and bought a Nikon 12x50 and a Pentax 20x60 after days and (literally) 20+ hours of reading, researching, and reviewing binoculars that would give me endless nights of use without the worry of returns or errors.

I bought the Nikon 12x50's on amazon for $95 and the Pentax on amazon for $175. Not sure if that meets your budget or not, but they have an outstanding deal on highly regarded astronomical binoculars.

[JonF]

I agree about paying very low prices - bound to be poor quality. However, I don't agree that you have to pay hundreds of pounds. I bought some bins for fifty quid and they've been excellent, optically good and solidly made. I've used them on every clear night for the last seven months, and I'm as pleased with them now as the day I bought them.

[johninderby]

For £100.00 you can get good bins, and although not as good as the high end bins, they can still do the job.

I bought a pair of 10x42 bins on sale at about £100.00 a couple of years ago. Very nice optics, nitrogen filled and excellent build quality. Definitely one of my best buys.

John

[David Smith]

My Miranda 10 x 50's cost me £25 in Dixons back in 1989. Not the best bins in the world but still going strong.

[garethmob]

om a fan of optricron bins the asphetics are really nice but very wide view (8X42) for £70 i learnt my lesson with my "lidl" which some people have good luck with unfortunatly i didnt

what about makig them into a single finder for your scope?

[Parus major]

~Generally speaking~ £50-£70 gets you the same quality of glass as a pair by the same company for £90-£120 but in a basic body and mechanism. The extra money buys a much better made binocular around that glass, occasionally with a coating or two but almost always with nitrogen filled waterproof optics. £100 is the beginning of quality, marked buy the advertising of five year warranties at that price point as opposed to the one year under that price point.

If I gave you sub fifty pound binoculars for a few weeks if I took them out your hand and put a pair with the same spec and prism type in your hand at £100 you'd see the difference instantly.

We're in a hobby that has people spending a lot of money on optics but apparently not on binoculars which I find odd. Fine if you're scouting around for something to look at but not if you intend to observe with only them. You get people ripping Lidl and Aldi telescopes to pieces but you get feverish alerts when those same shops get binoculars in. You get people with a list of Televue eyepieces in their sigs, handily using the same green colour from the eyepiece itself comparing every eyepiece to a Nagler in unflinching critical terms, zero tolerance to minor flaws in manufacturing but apparently a £20 binocular spend is fine.

[johninderby]

Wonder what it would be like to look through a pair of these.

John

Zeiss 20x60 S Image Stabilising Observation Binoculars £4,299.00

[rory]

i had a wake up call when down on my father in laws boat last year. i had my pentax 10x50 bins with me,and had the chance to do a side by side comparison with his bins ,which had markings on the lens (something to do with sailing ?) any way i dont recall what make his were but they blew mine out the water. i thought my bins were respectable but after looking through those marine jobby's i can really tell the difference. sold my pentax now !

[BinocularSky]

What we are seeing here is a common phenomenon: We see more with a binocular than we do with the unaided eye, so we deem the binocular "good". Then we see through a better binocular, and we realise that, what we once deemed "good" is actually "barely adequate" by comparison. Then we see through an even better one...

This is the reason I wish I'd never looked through a friend's Swarovski; until then I thought my £600 Opticron 10x42 was excellent... :-)

[JimFR]

Well, without wishing to be contrary, I paid £32.50 for a pair of Russian 10x50 bins from Long Eaton Camera Centre in 1989. I'm only now thinking of replacing them - I think one of the eyepieces is a bit wonky, as I've recently started getting slightly double images.

They've been knocked about a bit, mind...

[BinocularSky]

I think one of the eyepieces is a bit wonky, as I've recently started getting slightly double images.

Possibly prism rather than eyepiece.

[Parus major]

In 1989 you could buy a can of coke for 18p, though. £32 was a lot of money back then.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Regarding what to do with a wonky pair of 7x50 bins: I got a broken pair of Russian 10x50 bins for HFL (remember those) 5.00, or about 2.20 euros, and turned one half into a neat finder scope for my old 6" Newtonian. The other eyepiece is now in use as a (quite reasonable) 28mm Kelner EP for the kids' minidob.

[Merlin]

I have a selection of clean, robust,Japanese binoculars that are twenty-years and more old. All were acquired for a song on flea-markets.

I find them superior to many of today's binoculars. We don't have to buy new!

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

I got my first pair of 15x70s cheap, as I was not that sure I how much I was going to use them. These 89 euro Omegons were OK, and I have had a lot of fun with them (including a trip to South Africa and one donw-under, which bagged me loads of southern Caldwells). A used pair of Helios Apollo HD 15x70s came up on astrobuysell and I pounced on that. These are a lot better, but also more expensive. Having said that, I now know I use them a lot, so the investment is worth it. Fujinons might have the edge over these, but they are WAY more expensive. I would rather invest in a pair of bigger bins than replace the Helios Apollo HDs with an even better pair of 15x70s.