I’ve always fancied a pair of binoculars for when I’m in the hills. Seeing as my birthday is coming up, now is a good time to work out what would be good.

All I’m looking for is something to survive walking/biking around Scotland (mostly), reasonably small and the cheaper the better. Ideas please!

MrsJulianA’s 10×42 Bushnell Powerviews are pretty good and fairly small.

Assume you know what the numbers all are and how also how they affect the light-gathering capabilities?

lidl have some in at the moment, dont know much about them , but i bet they’re cheap

lidl ones are 10×50 for 14.99, seems a bargain tbh

Or you could pay £900+ for some Leica’s, I bet there’s hardly any difference.

I got some off Fleabay for about £15, just to keep in the car, but TBH they’r absolutely CRAAAP (compared to my 10×50 Optolyth Alpins wot I’ve had for 30 years)
You gets wot you pays for.

ahah, window watcher eh……… 😉

JulianA — I’m a newbie to this, so no, I don’t know what the numbers mean. I’ve just read about binocular basics, but feel free to point out anything obvious I should take into consideration.

the hustler — those may well do, but I don’t see them online.

ton — I was waiting for that… You’re as bad as my girlfriend!

The best minis I have used are the Leica 8 x 20BR, not cheap though, but very nice to use.

Mid size, worth looking at the Swift 8×42 Ultra Lite Roof Binocular, my Mrs picked up a pair in the States and she loves them.

Remember, its something you should try before you buy.

I second the mini Leica. The image is so much brighter than you’ll get with cheaper stuff, worth every penny. Great at rugby & cricket matches too

@ml – that site seems to give a fair amount of info.

Only skim-read it, but not sure whether it points this out: if you divide the smaller number into the larger number, you can use the result as a kind of ‘brightness index’ (the higher the better).

Thus MrsJA’s 10x42s have a ‘brightness index’ of 4.2 but my 10x50s have a ‘brightness index’ of five, therefore the image that I see should be around 20% brighter.

Having said which, MrsJA’s binos are excellent and do offer a slight weight saving – you pays your money and you takes your choice. We paid around £100 each for ours, but we’re fairly serious about our birdwatching and like a reasonable image (and NEED to go and buy a telescope!).

Good luck – you’ll just have to make the trade-off between image brightness, image quality, weight, magnification and price!

Dont overlook the Aldi/Lidl ones, all the birdwatcher forums rave about them, got my Dad some for Christmas from Aldi and they are fantastic. As good as ones costing £60-80 apparently. The Aldi ones are Bresser 10×50. They also had a compact set but didnt look at them as my Dad wanted large ones.