Vortex Viper 10x42 HD binoculars

[part timer]

Due to my carelessness my pair of 10x50 binoculars was damaged beyond repair recently. I began looking for a replacement. This was fairly urgent as, due to work and family most of my observing is done with binoculars at the moment. I also work at a great site for wildlife and bird watching along with plane spotting. I often have a few minutes at night when I can leave things running and step just out of the room to gaze at the stars.

Now I mentally toted up how much I had spent on cheap binoculars over the years and decided that this time I should really think about getting something decent!

So my requirements were,

Good optics

Sturdy construction

Quality construction so I didn’t have to constantly fiddle

10x magnification (ideal for a multipurpose binocular in my own opinion)

Aperture suitable for astronomy and yet not too big for general purpose use

I did the usual research on the net and then asked on the forum. Then I found a local supplier who seemed to stock a good few decent binoculars and went and tried them all out. I tried some good quality 10

In the end I chose to get the most expensive pair on my list. These were the Vortex Viper 10x42 HD roof prism binoculars. Many seasoned users will now be thinking ‘those are bird watching bins’. They could not be more wrong!

I have now had chance to use the binoculars a fair bit in both astronomical and terrestrial use and can make a few comments on them. I’m not going to pretend these are faultless but I can say that the faults they have don’t matter! These are seriously fantastic binoculars.

They are about the same size and weight as my (very) old soviet 8x30’s. They are more compact however and perfectly designed to just ‘fit’ into the hand. You can hold these things up all day and night and not get tired. Clearly a lot of effort has gone into balance and fitment. They truly feel like an extension of the body and the twist out eyecups fit perfectly and unbelievably comfortably into the eye sockets. The rubber armour gives a lovely firm grip with no slip. The dioptre setting is of the perfect stiffness and then locks into place, once it’s done it is done until YOU decide to change it, no more fiddling every time it comes out of the case! The eyepiece and objective coves can be tethered or not as is your preference (mine is tethered). They fit perfectly and are of the ‘fit over’ type not the awful ‘push in’ type which I feel just grinds dirt and dust into the lens area. Essentially, with the Viper’s you can just forget about the bins and just concentrate on the views.

So, what are the views like? Pretty darn good!

Too my eyes they are colour neutral (some reviewers say they are warm some seem to regard them as cool. I think this is fairly subjective and depends in a large way on what you are used to with your current optics. Anyway, neither I nor anyone else is going to say these binoculars offer any distracting tone to the image.

The image is absolutely sharp across the overwhelming majority of the field of view. Noticeable distortion of images occurs in only the last few percent of the field. This distortion is less at the very edge of field than my cheap liddl 10x50’s showed at 50 or 60% of the way to the edge of field. The distorted section is so small it’s hard to notice. You really have to look for it and the spend ages panning around or moving stars to the edge of field to see it.

Now, the binoculars show some distortion around the outer 10% of the field. This is not noticeable when the bins are stationary (even on star fields) but is noticed when panning around. The outer view seems to roll a bit. It is all in focus but distorted slightly. All optics are a compromise and this is the compromise made on the Viper’s. It’s not a lot and I’ve made it sound worse than it is but it does need mentioning.

Next is the level of colour correction. It is not as high as some binoculars but is higher than most! There is some false colour in the highest contrast situations but the optics are so staggeringly sharp that very little detail is lost. I could clearly see details of the feathers on a rook stood on a high beam with a low sun behind in a bright sky background. The bright moon shows just the faintest colour on the very edge. Much less than any of my previous binoculars

I’ve seen detail on Peregrines, Buzzards and sparrow hawks at huge distances both in the air and on perches. I have seen incredible detail on smaller birds and insects at ranges of 100 yards to the incredible close focus of about four or five feet! I’ll add that focussing is 1.5 turns from infinity to four feet, which I find perfect. Any faster and I often overshoot and have to fiddle.

In astronomical use I have NEVER seen such detail on the moon in binoculars and I’ve used much more powerful pairs in the past. The tonal differences across the surface are amazing and both the day lit sector and terminator are absolutely tack sharp. Star fields are breathtaking across the whole field. There is almost no distortion of stars at all. As far as deep sky goes, these binoculars truly excel. They easily pull in Messier’s and NGC’s that I struggled to find in good conditions in my Celestron 15x70’s, my excellent Bresser 8x56’s and my Russian 20x60’s. The quality of optics and coatings combines to absolutely destroy cheap bins in light gathering. All this in a few days in which the moon has waned from full to about half, and so provided a fair amount of sky glow! I had been slightly nervous about combining 10x with 42mm objectives. That was simply due to not using genuinely high end binoculars before!

Glare is none existent. The coatings just do not reflect light. I’ve really tried to use them with bright lights nearby in all angles and you just don’t get glare!

Now this binocular costs around £500 (I’ve seen them between £475 and £540 ish) which is around a third of price of comparable binoculars from Leica, Zeis, and Swarovski and so on. These are not one third as good! In short, they are top grade in terms of mechanics, and optics. They lose less than 10% when compared to the leica’s I tried. Those binoculars were better in several areas but both the Leica and Zeiss showed false colour as well, albeit even less than the Vipers (I have seen it in every optical device I’ve ever used). Essentially I couldn’t be happier with my binoculars and they are in many ways my preeminent optical instrument.

I heartily recommend them!

[Capricorn]

Don't know where you are but a month back at Rutland water was the Birdfair, a sort of strange event, but thay have a marquee dedicated to optics, binoculars in particular. Had you been looking then and if it were feasible to have made the trip I would have suggested you try there as you could have compared just about every major brand of binoculars ans every model.

I have spent some time at the event looking through binoculars, once to the extent that walking straight afterwrds was a problem.

One make up there a few years back were brilliant - thought it may have been the Vortex but cannot see a model in the same specification 12x50 (maybe less then 50mm) I think.

Will agree that the Leica's take some beating, actually haven't seen anything that has beaten them, but at £1400 a piece somewhat out of most budgets.

One set that I was very impressed with was a set of Minox, which were 1/3 the cost of the Leica's but the performance was almost the same. The Minox beat the Nikons, and Swarkofski's.

Just wish I could rercall who made the 12x's as I cannot find them, or anything like, and I didn't go up this year.