Monoculars - Worth Spending Extra?

wdw2003

I bought a very cheap 7x18 monocular recently and it's better than nothing, but I was wondering if anyone had any experience of the Zeiss or Leica ones around £250-£300 and if the quality is (very) noticably better.

I'm just after something small and light, so don't want the extra weight and bulk of binoculars. It would be mostly used in the hills and holidays for a bit of extra oomph.

John_Gray

The dearer devices will have considerably better lenses. It really depends on whether you want to pay that much!

kwikbreaks

If you don't notice the defects that will be present in all cheap optics then they can't annoy you. The trouble is once seen they do annoy every time you use the device so make sure you don't read the next bit of this post. Sticking to a monocular avoids the major annoyance of misalignment of the two fields.

Never look for things like chromatic aberration (colour fringing) or distortions (things that should be straight but look bent) and you'll remain as happy as Larry. There'll be other issues but those two are the most obvious.

JJ_Egan

Cheap = poor light gathering and light gathering is the key .
The top of the range bins are vastly superior to the cheap end .
However as the price level for the best was rather high i went mid range decent make and decent lenses . Bushnell brand .

Its worth reading up as much as you can the birding sites may be a good source especially for mono .


jje

wdw2003

Thanks folks. I checked out a birdwatching site, where they seem to be right into such things, and the consensus seems to be that Leica is better than Zeiss, but dearer. However, there do seem to be reasonably good quality mid-range ones around the £50-80 mark. The question now is whether or not Leica is £200 better. Difficult to know without a hands-on comparison.