GMGold Black Wooden Picture Frame, Wood, Lot de 1 NOIR, 10x15 cm

Product Information

These Discovery Gator 8-20x25 binoculars come with fold up/down eyecups made from rubber. For a compact in this price range this is fairly typical and whilst they are comfortable enough, this design is not as a well made twist up/down eyecup in terms of being able to accurately set up the instrument to position your eyes at the ideal distance to the ocular lens to get a full view. Located near the right eyepiece where you usually find the diopter adjuster is a slider which is used to alter the magnification. I found the placement to be excellent as it was very easy to change the magnification setting using my right thumb without having to move the binocular from my eyes or make a large change to my natural grip on the binoculars. Some cheap optics use coatings on the lenses to artificially tint the view, for example you find many cheap binoculars with ruby coated lenses which are used to filter red to compensate for their poor-quality optics that do not properly converge the color spectrum. Thankfully this is not the case with these and I thought that the colors that are produced by the EagleView look and feel natural, but with possibly a tiny bit less saturation than on my control binoculars.

There is no mention in any of their marketing of them being either water or fog proof and so I must assume that they are neither. In this price range, not many binoculars are fully waterproof or fogproof and so this is fairly understandable, but it would be nice to know that they were at least a little "weather proof" - anyway I am sure that they would survive a little light rain, but to be completely safe just make sure that you don't get them really wet in very bad weather. The slider is nice and smooth and is large enough to make even quite fine adjustments to the magnification straight forward. I could not find any details as to exactly what the interior frame or the exterior body is made of, but the exterior looks to be made from some sort of hard plastic. Nikon state that they have added a carbon fibre material in parts of the grip which they say enhances durability. I am guessing that this is in the parts of the barrels that have a thin dark grey rubber coating on them, which you can see as being the dark sections on the image below: It is only very lightly padded and so whilst it will protect the instrument inside from scratching, dust etc, it will not help with heavier impacts. Whilst not at the same level as which you get from a high or even mid-to-high level 42mm binocular for example, for a low costing 25mm compact binocular, I thought that the colors produced and the level of contrast you see in the image were pretty good. this is especially true at lower magnifications where I am happy to say they easily compare with the majority of other 8x or 10x compacts that I come across at this sort of price level.So here I am thinking of applications like hiking in the mountains or even as the instrument that a price conscious prepper would store in their survival / bug out bag as the Discovery Gator 8-20x25 binoculars could certainly be useful for scouting out terrain and looking for dangers or possible routes ahead of you. Storage & organisation Furniture Textiles Kitchenware & tableware Kitchens Lighting Decoration Rugs, mats & flooring Beds & mattresses Baby & children Smart home Bathroom products Laundry & cleaning Plants & plant pots Home electronics Home improvement Outdoor living Food & beverages Christmas Shop Shop by room Comparing a low cost binocular like these with other binoculars that are far more expensive may seem a little unfair at first, but as long as you keep in mind the price difference, it does throw up a few interesting points and can highlight a few of their relative strengths and weaknesses and show where some of your money goes if you choose a more expensive pair of binoculars.

By improving the level of light transmittance and reducing unwanted reflections that can cause negative effects like ghosting, the level of Anti-Reflection Lens Coatings is one of the most important things to look for when buying binoculars.To see this in action, you can hold these binoculars up at arm's length and look at the eyepiece lenses, where you can clearly see the circle of light in the eyepieces, this represents the exit pupil. As you increase the magnification you can actually see this circle of light in each eyepiece getting smaller and smaller - see my series of photos below that I took to demonstrate this: Other than to say that the objectives have a 25mm diameter and that the oculars are just over 12mm in diameter, I can't really expand as no information is given. This is not the case with the Discovery Gator 8-20x25 binoculars and whilst the best image I could achieve after fine tuning the focus wheel was still not quite as sharp at 20x as that which I saw at 8x, it really was not bad at all, which for me is actually impressive for a compact zoom binocular at this price.

Caused by chromatic aberrations, the level of color fringing that is observable around the edges of contrasting objects becomes a little more evident at higher magnifications. Even so and especially at lower powers, I feel the amount is more than acceptable for a binocular in this price class and thus I would say these do a reasonably good job of keeping it to a minimum. Strong Points: I think that on the whole their main feature, the 8-24x zoom works pretty well, which I have to be honest I was rather surprised about. Being able to zoom into something to view it in more detail is nice and the actual zoom adjustment dial is well positioned and it is really simple to adjust without having to remove the binoculars from your face, or even change your grip. In your hands the Nikon EagleViews feel good and I would say that they not only look good but also give off the impression that they are more expensive than they actually are. The image quality and brightness at 8x magnification is also pretty good for a pair of compacts.

Discovery Gator 8-20x25 Zoom Binoculars Review

Image shake also dramatically increases at the higher powers, which makes it very hard to view fine details, which in many ways negates the advantage of having a high magnification. As you would expect, keeping the image nice and still becomes harder and harder as you increase the magnification settings. At 24x I was able to the image still enough to take in all the details of what I was looking, but I had to concentrate on staying very still as even the smallest movement has a big impact on the amount of image shake. This is fine for short bursts, when you just want to take in a bit of detail, but is definitely not something that you would want to do over longer periods.

What I can say is that these use reverse porro prisms to turn the image upright. Whilst this design may not be the most compact design, it is both relatively cheap and simple to make as you do not need the same level of tolerances or the extra coatings to produce the same level of optical performance as that of a roof prism which is why it is a popular and usually the best choice for a cheap binocular. When set to a magnification level of 8x, their field of view is 80m at 100m / 240ft at 1000 yards (4.6°) - which, for a what at this setting effectively an 8x25 binocular is not very good. To put this into context, the Steiner 8.5x26 Wildlife Pro has a FOV of 333ft at 1000 yards and the Kowa 8x25 BD has a FOV of 331ft at 1000 yards and even the Minox 10x25 BV BRW which has a magnification of 10x has a FOV of 290ft at 1000 yards.Do keep in mind that whilst the double hinge roof prism compacts are undoubtedly smaller when folded, they do have their downsides and unless you are prepared to spend a more you will likely not achieve an image quality as good as you get with these porro prism compacts and others like them. You should be under no illusions - these are far from being the best binoculars in the world, but having said that these Nikon EagleView Zoom binoculars are far, far cheaper than the top of the range compacts and to be fair to them they are not at all bad and I would say easily outperform their price tag. If you can live with their weak points and are looking for a cheap pair of zoom binoculars then the Nikon EagleView Zoom 8-24x25 CF maybe just for you. Save a few minor details like the variable magnification adjustment slider near the right eyepiece, the overall body shape of this Discovery Gator is very typical to that of your typical compact porro prism binocular, which is mostly a good thing as I find this particular shape comfortable to hold in the hands when using the instrument.