Olivion binoculars

[faulksy]

What's everyone's thoughts on this brand of binoculars there's some nice ones On eBay didn't want to bid till I checked with you guys first

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[faulksy]

Should of said these are the qb range? 7 x 50

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[ronin]

Appears that Olivon products are often the Barsta products rebadged to Olivion.

This is occuring more often.

This is the Barsta link: Barsta

The main Barsta binocular page: BarstaB

They make a fair selection of binoculars.

Barsta appear to produce a reasonable, even good, range of items, they produce the BST Skyguiders/AT Paradigm eyepieces and other eyepieces which appear to be good performance and a good price.

Will say look round as the Olivion ED eyepiece cost £90, the BST Skyguider is £47. They are the same eyepiece.

As they are rebadged they will likely be sold under other brands/names as well, just no idea of the alternative names. Checked Skys the Limit and they do not sell binoculars. Wouldn suggest a half hours spent searching for "Barsta binocular reviews" and see what surfaces.

They are the "older" porro prism design, but that is more stable and has better light transmission then the roof prism design.

All depends on the price, ultimately.

[ronl]

Quite a good review here http://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/review/binoculars/olivon-qb

don't know how old the review is but are £79.00 they are on Amazon for £53.99, don't know

how much on flea bay

[BinocularSky]

I presume you mean Olivon, not Olivion

Sky at Night Review (anything under 90% on a S@N review should sound a note of caution).

Typical budget far-eastern stuff, branded for the importer. Good examples can be acceptable, but factory quality control is pretty useless, so make sure you check it over thoroughly when you get it. The usual other caveats re this budget kit apply as well. (Olivon-badged stuff tends to be over-priced IMO (e.g. their T-G B-H is £85, compared to £50 for the identical thing badged Konig).

(Edit: X-posted with ronl)

[faulksy]

So best avoid then, seen them on eBay for 57 quid and thought they were quite good, thanks for that any thing else in that price range anyone can reccomend. ?

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[ronin]

The only problem with avoiding Chinese branded items is that I suspect 80% or more are Chinese branded items. If you look through the assorted Chinese Manufacturing sites, Long Perng, Baride, Barsta, GSO, Intane, UO etc they all make binoculars. Willing to guess that almost any binocular set under £300 comes from a Chinese production line.

If there are any friendly binocular shops around you then pay them a vist and try out half a dozen sets, if one is good buy that actual set of binoculars that is in your hands. There can be differences between individual ones. Oddly I found this on the high end ones - Nikon and Swarovski most.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

The only problem with avoiding Chinese branded items is that I suspect 80% or more are Chinese branded items. If you look through the assorted Chinese Manufacturing sites, Long Perng, Baride, Barsta, GSO, Intane, UO etc they all make binoculars. Willing to guess that almost any binocular set under £300 comes from a Chinese production line.

If there are any friendly binocular shops around you then pay them a vist and try out half a dozen sets, if one is good buy that actual set of binoculars that is in your hands. There can be differences between individual ones. Oddly I found this on the high end ones - Nikon and Swarovski most.

I do not avoid Chinese made stuff, I avoid cheap Chinese made stuff. My Helios Apollo 15x70 HD bins are Chinese made, and excellent; my APM 80 F/6 triplet is Chinese made, and a great instrument (in part I think because APM do perform quality control before shipping). Loads of really good stuff is coming from China, provided they build it up to a spec, rather than down to a price (as Steve (BinocularSky) has said before)

[BinocularSky]

Re Chinese binoculars, this bears repeating (from here):

For years, the international markets are flooded with unbelievably low-price Chinese binoculars and some of the users have been complaining or bashing loudly about the quality control consistency of Chinese binoculars for a while. Actually, it's quite simple to improve the quality consistency: spending much more time in grinding and selecting glass, spending much more time in training the workers for assembling the binoculars, and spending much more time in the final quality check - then, a much better quality binocular will be made, however, at the trade-off of much higher production cost.