UKH

Can anyone recommend a decent pair of binoculars please? I don't need them for anything special like bird watching; just to be able to use them if I'm walking somewhere and see something in the distance that I want to identify or to scan the distance to see what's out there. For instance, living on the coast, I sometimes like to see what's on the horizon.

I don't want to spend a lot but would prefer something that isn't too heavy so that I can put them in my rucksack.

Sorry if this is all a bit vague but thanks in advance

https://www.ukhillwalking.com/forums/gear/compact_binoculars-728037

In truly classic UKC fashion I am going to recommend something that is not what you ask for in the OP. A monocular. 

I got a Minox one, I think 8*40 or 42, second hand off GumTree for £40 earlier this year, it's perfect for my needs. They are more than £100 new so see if you can get a good used one. 

You do get what you pay for and a cheap pair from Argos will do what you require.

However if you are interested in a mid priced pair of binoculars that are not cheap but not stupid money then I recommend Viking Binoculars or RSPB Binoculars. I suspect that they are one and the same but the branding is different. 😊

10 times magnification sounds like a good starting point. Personally I'm not a fan of 8 times magnification.

I don't want to teach you how to suck eggs however binoculars are usually described as something like 10x40. The first number is the magnification and the second number is the diameter of the big lens. A bigger diameter lets in more light so the image is brighter.

https://www.vikingoptical.co.uk/binoculars/

https://shopping.rspb.org.uk/binoculars/

You could go big. I had a pair and its advisable to put these on a tripod and view at your leisure.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Celestron-71018-SkyMaster-20-Binocular/dp/B0007UQN...

I've had several pair of small binos - and always break them.  The last pair was quite decent (Nikon), but now the two halves point in different directions.  I always spend more time getting the two halves matched to my eyes and then focusing on whatever it was, and then shuggling them around so that each half is aligned with the right part of my eye so that I have a halfway decent image. 

I've given up now and splurged on a monocular.  Keep it simple.  Small, convenient and rucksack proof, and gas filled so that it won't fog up on the hills in winter.  Small enough to go in the breast pocket of a softshell jacket.

8x is hard enough to hold still to look at something a long way away.  10x is harder.  Anything more than that needs support.  Unsurprisingly, monoculars are cheaper, and lighter and smaller.

The only pair of binoculars I ever got on with was a large pair of 10 x75 auto-focus ones which were stupid expensive and belonged to the Queen.  I broke those too - drove into a very big ditch at night with them around my neck.

With my monocular, if I want it more steady I attach it to a belt loop on my trousers via a long lanyard which will go taut when I hold the monocular at eye level. It's not perfect but it's an improvement. I used to do this with compact cameras in low light, to good effect, to steady them on longer exposures. 

Very much depends on your budget, but you can get a reasonable pair for under £100. As you spend more it starts to be law of diminishing returns.

Expensive bins with better optics come into their own if you're using them in low light conditions - like bird watching at dusk.

Also do you want a compact pair or "full size" - which can still be pretty compact. If you want to backpack miles with bins then compact makes sense. If you're never more than 200 metres from the car then less so.

I've had a pair of opticron 8x32 for 20 years now. They're full-sized but still pretty compact with a wide field of view. Cost about £120, would still be under £200 now and I suspect I'd need to pay silly money to get a really significant improvement.

Check out:

https://www.at-infocus.co.uk/

They sell used and ex demo. I normal times you can try stuff out in a bird hide. 

I’ve got some Hawke 8x42 and they’ve been great for wildlife watching. They’re about £120 and not  Zeiss but the optics are nice. 

Barr & Stroud are decent. I’ve got a pair of theirs (10x50 ‘Sahara’ model) and they are very good considering the cost. 

Yep, definitely recommended,  bought my new compact Opticrons from the Denby Dale shop just before Lockdown 2 👍

Great shop, let me look through some £1500 Svarovskis after I'd just bought a  pair of Opticrons at 1/10 the price, knowing full well I wasn't going to change my mind.

Anther vote for InFocus(bought a scope and binoculars from their shop at London Colney).

BTW TomV I know it is subjective but what was your impression of the Swarovski binoculars? Were they 10 times better than the Opticrons?

Dave

No, to my eye they weren't even twice as good. We've had this discussion on here before, and in my opinion apart from the most absolutely marginal sutuations ( detecting the correct colour of a tiny sliver of a bird's wing in a rapidly advancing dusk?) there is no point in paying ten times the price of a perfectly good product because you won't get ten times the performance or anything near.

Cynically i often wonder if people would pay the surcharge for the expensive brands if they were badged differently: if you  participated in a blind (!!!) trial and discovered that the one you were sure was the Swarovski turned out to be made by Opticron, would you still pay the Swarovski asking price?

For me Opticron are a fine brand and within their range  95% of the population should find something to suit their purpose. 

( With  regard to the blind trial, I know full well that some people will say that would never happen   )

Law of diminishing returns, when all this (Covid) is over, maybe I'll pop into the Brockholes shop and see just how much I'd have to spend to get a worthwhile improvement over my old Opticrons.

Or from Hawke with the reassurance of their no fault lifetime warranty on many models, swithering at the moment myself on the bino front................high end I'd worry about using, with a no quibble even if its your own stupidity replacement guaranteed things start to be more useable, less stressful and more likely to be in your hand when you might want them. Still won't be buying top end, but might encourage me to walk up their line up a bit.

Yeah. I live my 8x42s. It’s a woah moment when you look through them when used to 50£ mini binos

Thanks Tom V. I had a feeling that might be your answer - a bit/somewhat better, but certainly not that much better.

Dave

like Michael says, diminishing re turns. . It's good to be able to try it out though, which is why I was grateful to the guy at In Focus.

I've tried a 5 x basic price Barolo and wasn't overly impressed: I won't be trying a 10 x version any time soon. 

I'd like the chance to drive a 5 x version of my Octavia ( Panamera Sport Turismo S ?) but that's not on the cards till my Scoop 6 comes in and I don't think it's possible to buy an estate car with a 10 X factor.