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There is now a huge range of sub £50 binoculars available from high street catalogue shops, local discount stores, local markets and on ebay. Most of these binoculars are of Chinese origin and in my experience they look and feel well made and superficially they appear to offer very good value for money, particularly when compared to those binoculars sold by my local photographic shop were over 3 times as expensive.
In my search for a pair high power but reasonably priced binoculars I had opportunity to try a large number of these binoculars with magnifications varying from 10x to 120x. and prices from £25 to £170. In my testing of the various binoculars I learned a number of points that may be of interest to others who are trying to decide what to buy and could be used to supplement the excellent buying advice you can get on a number of web sites (including Strathspey). Many of the advice columns give very good advice as to what to buy - but they don't always tell you why.
In the end I purchased a pair of 20x90 from Strathspey as present for someone with a house that looks out over the Bristol Channel. I was so impressed with them that I later ordered a second pair (20x60) for myself. I think that is a pretty good recommendation for Strathspey!
What follows are my key pieces of advice for the novice binocular buyer.
Key points to remember
My initial aim was to buy some binoculars which were a lot more powerful than my existing 8x magnification pair. As I tested binoculars from 10x to 120x magnification. I soon realised was that making an image bigger doesn't mean you are actually going to see any more detail, in some cases I could see more detail with my old 8x magnification than with a new pair with 30x magnification.
Probably the easiest way to explain this is by likening it to using a computer to zoom in on a digital photograph. As you enlarge the image you expect to see more detail - but if the photo is of low resolution the image appears to get more hazy the more you zoom in. It's the same with high power binoculars with poor optics, you see a large image - but it can also be very fuzzy and unclear. In cases like that you are much better off with smaller magnification binoculars with better optics.
A good test of resolution is to see how far away you can read letters and numbers, good targets are car number plates or distant signposts. In this tests the Strathspey 20x 90 easily beat some similarly priced Practica 120x 80 Zoom binoculars! At 120x magnification the image was huge but it was also so dim and so fuzzy that it was virtually impossible to read writing that the Strathspey 20x90 would let you read with relative ease!
As a test of resolution I tried to see how far away I could just read normal 3mm news print. All binoculars were tripod mounted.
| Make | Specification | Distance (m) | Comment |
| Naked eye | 2m | News print just readable | |
| Telstar | 8X30 | 12m | |
| Strathspey | 20x60 | 23m | |
| Strathspey | 20x 90 | 33m | Excellent bright image |
| Practica | 20-120x 80 zoom | 33m | Very dark and murky image |
Even with my old 8x magnification binoculars I loose resolution because of binocular shake. When trying to read the name of a passing ship, things are much clearer when the binoculars are propped.
When you move to more powerful binoculars, the problems with shake become much worse. In my opinion there is little point in getting binoculars more powerful than 8x or 10x unless you are going to support them on a tripod or similar. When testing hand held binoculars at 8x and 20x magnification the smaller magnification 8x gave a much more stable and generally much more relaxing and usable image.
Below I give the results of a test where I tried reading news print with the binoculars tripod mounted and handheld so that you can see the sort of differences in performance.
| Make |
Specification |
Tripod distance (m) |
Handheld distance (m) |
| Telstar |
8x30 |
12 |
8 |
| Strathspey |
20x60 |
22 |
12 |
| Strathspey |
20x90 |
32 |
12 |
One final point of note, even if you don’t wear glasses, the "eye relief" feature on some of the Strathspey binoculars is very useful for tripod users. Unless you have a very heavyweight tripod, you will find that the most stable image on the tripod only comes when you don’t actually touch the binoculars at all. In those conditions the eye relief is very useful for all users because it allows you to pull back slightly from the binoculars and still see a full image.
John Burns has put some very good information on his Strathspey web-site about the size and brightness of the image. This is important and not just at low light levels. A large bright image such as that given by the 20x90 (4.5mm image) means that the adjustment of the binoculars to fit your eyes is far less critical than on even my 20x60’s (3mm image). By the time you try something like the Practica 120x80 ( 0.7mm image) the image is so narrow and so dim that it is very difficult to keep your eyes in the correct spot behind the lens and very difficult to make out any detail in the gloom. Yes it really is that bad! In contrast the 20x90 has a wonderful big bright image that is so easy and relaxing to view
As binoculars get more powerful it becomes increasingly important that the two barrels of the binocular are absolutely precisely aligned (correct collimation). With poor collimation you will find that your two eyes will be looking in slightly different directions and you will get a "double image" effect. Sometimes your eyes can correct small errors by going cross eyed – but be warned that one pair of 30x50zoom binoculars I tested seemed to be OK – but later they turned out to create a double image when looking at objects at greater than 1 mile distance. You need to test very carefully if you are going to identify this before you buy! Apart from the Strathspeys, this is a problem I found with virtually all of the budget binoculars I tested (even the £150 Practica 120x80 zoom!).
Having tried a large number of cheap binoculars very briefly I tried some Opticron binoculars sold by the local photographic shop. They seemed to have very good performance but were also well outside my budget. That was when I found Strathspey and on the advice of John Burns the proprietor I first bought the 20x90 binoculars and later the 20x 60s. Here are my views on them both.
Strathspey 20x90
A big heavy pair of binoculars, but its worth it! They are well made and sit nicely on a tripod. The lens resolution is very good and combined with the big bright image they really are a delight to use.
In my huge enthusiasm for these binoculars I have only 2 reservations about them:-
Overall – highly recommended as a tripod mounted binocular. A delight to use.
Strathspey 20x60
These are a third of the price of the 20x90 and I was interested to see how they performed in comparison.
The first thing I noted was how much smaller and lighter they are than the 20x90. This makes them a lot easier to carry (though they are far from being pocket sized)
The build quality is a match for its bigger brother and my initial view was that and its optical performance was far better than I had dared to hope for from the level 1 coated lenses. I use the 20x60 mounted on a tripod for maximum resolution and it is when you start to look closely at the steady tripod image that you can see the optical differences between these and the 20x90. The 20x60 image never quite snaps into the perfect focus that the 20x90’s achieve – the resolution isn’t quite there. (Note: these are now level II coated)
Viewing the night sky was a lot better than I had hoped with the level 1 lenses – there are a lot more stars visible than with the naked eye - though the poorer resolution means that Jupiter always looked slightly out of focus.
But I'’m nit picking here. Optically they may only be 80% as good as the bigger 20x90s but they are 30% of the cost and 200% better than anything else I tried in the sub £80 price bracket.
Overall – Recommended for good performance and excellent value for money.