Another night vision thread

[Walks with dogs]

The dark nights are well underway again and Christmas is coming up. We have had a few discussions over the years over NV but I have always held off buying one as the general advice on here is that cheap ones aren't up to much.
Has that changed lately? Is anyone aware of any NV product for about £100 that is worth buying?

 

[JonathanD]

Not to my knowledge. You are still looking at around the £200+ mark for really good ones.

 

[woof]

The old Russian ones were supposed to be radio active !.

Rob

 

[TeeDee]

Can't remember who it was apart from being a forum member here , but they reckoned these were a good bit of Ruski Kit.

http://www.binocularsmart.com/night-vision/atom-night-vision-binoculars.shtml

Not too pricey , but as tech moves on so quickly , give it a nother couple years and the cutting edge military stuff will be on the shop shelves.

 

[squaddie 527]

aldis are selling a monocular (SINGLE) lens model for £99.99 apparently it has a 3yr warranty. hope ths helps.

 

[Walks with dogs]

Are they selling them now Squaddie or is it one of these deals they publish a week or so in advance?

 

[Mikey P]

You will need to manage your expectations well if you only have a couple of hundred quid to spend. For this money, you're looking at Generation 1 equipment which requires much more illumination than Gen II or III due to the lower sensitivity. I would suggest that you try and have a look through other people's units before spending any cash as, if you expect to see something as good as the military Gen II or Gen III, or the type of images we see on TV nature documentaries, you will be sadly disappointed.

 

[squaddie 527]

yes they still had them as of 15/11/10

 

[Walks with dogs]

Thanks all. Might nip down to Aldi tomorrow morning, just for a look.

 

[woodspirits]

take a look on ebay, i have a gen 1 yukon x3 mag retail at £200+ for £89 immaculate and works perfectly, on my research prior to buying, there was little difference between gen1/2 for real improvement you need to go to gen3, megga money!

 

[squaddie 527]

any joy with that night vision wwd?

 

[Walks with dogs]

Can't find one at my local Aldi. Assuming I do see one I've then got to convince myslf its worth it for another grown ups toy. ....do fancy one though.

 

[Walks with dogs]

Found one! Just spent £100.38 at my local Aldi and am now a proud owner. Why £100.38? I picked up a packet of bourbon creams as well.

Bring on the night! I'll let you know what I think.

 

[Walks with dogs]

Well, the dogs think I'm mental but I've just had a very slow walk in the local fields with my new scope.

First impressions out of the box, tried it in the garden and was bitterly disappointed, very dark image, very poor resolution and lots of "snow". Fortunately this is because I'm an idiot and hadn't removed the lens cap - it has a small hole in the cap so you can try it in a lit room so I was looking through a pinhole. So I removed the lens cap.

From then on I was really , really impressed.

It has an IR illuminator for very dark conditions, worked ok in my pitch black garage . Bright image with very good resolution once focussed. It focuses on the main lens and also on the eyepiece.

Then out to the fields where it worked really well. Images close up are very good resolution , less so on more distant objects but it is foggy here. I would say useful up to about 40 metres for a clear image. I could see another dog walker about 100yds away but no real detail, how much of that was down to fog only time will tell. I was watching my dogs run round and being dogs , really good focussed images.

In all , used it for about an hour and was very pleased with this bit of kit. Its a toy for me for occasional use watching animals etc and for that , for the price it fits the bill quite nicely thanks. One thing I really like is that it works well without being switched on. Daft as it sounds it only seems to need battery if the IR illuminator is switched on. At first I assumed it was on but the on light wasn't working but I took the batteries out and it continued to work.

Good recommendation Squaddie.