Why you should trust us

I’ve been birding since grade school and have spent the past 25 years working as a professional ornithologist, traveling worldwide to look for and learn about birds. I’ve published a couple dozen scientific papers and wrote Important Bird Areas of California, published in 2004 by Audubon California. Professionally, I lead birding trips for both beginners and experts, and for my “day job” I perform environmental surveys for individuals, conservation groups, corporations, and government agencies.


The author testing binoculars in Mexico. Dan Cooper for NYT Wirecutter

I’ve peered through binoculars of different types and made by dozens of different brands over the years, and had settled on my current pair of $2,500 Leica Ultravids. After eight weeks of testing 35 pairs of binoculars, both full-size and compact, in the $150 to $350 price range (and a few that were cheaper or more expensive), I can honestly say that if my Leicas got lost tomorrow, I wouldn’t hesitate to replace them with one of our top picks.

Who this is for

Anyone looking to make far-away objects appear a bit closer should consider a good pair of binoculars. But you might wonder why this story is so oriented toward bird watching. The answer is simple: Binoculars that are great for birders are great for anyone looking to make things appear closer—whether you’re hunting, watching sports, or otherwise. That’s because birding asks everything you need to ask of binoculars. So even if you never plan to seek a scissor-tailed flycatcher or a harpy eagle, birding binoculars will do what you ask. (But you really should try out birding; for more info, contact your local Audubon Society, or, in North America, pick up either The Sibley Guide to Birds or the Kaufman Field Guide to Birds of North America.)

No matter what you plan to gaze at, your binoculars need to do two things well: They need to make distant objects closer, and they need to make them clearer. The better the binoculars, the better you can see those birds up in trees, those athletes down on a field, the antlers of a deer crouching at the edge of a woodlot, or the butterflies gathering at a drying patch of mud along a trail. We’ve tried to pick binoculars that do well at all those tasks.


Challenging conditions—dense vegetation and varying levels of light. Dan Cooper for NYT Wirecutter

How we picked

Binoculars’ optics consist of three main components that affect their performance: the ocular lenses (in the eyepiece), the objective lenses (the lenses that are farthest away from your face), and the prism, which we’ll discuss further in a bit. The ocular lens is a magnifier. So when you see binoculars’ specifications, the first number signifies how much that lens enlarges what you’re looking at. In the case of all the models we tested, that number is an eight, so you’re getting an image size eight times larger than you see with the naked eye. The objective lens gathers light; its related number—in our case, 42—indicates the diameter of that lens in millimeters. The bigger the lens, the more light it can gather.

We initially chose to limit our tests to 8x42 binoculars for a number of reasons, one being that we found 10x binoculars to be too shaky, like walking around with a fully zoomed telephoto camera lens. Plus, the 42 objective-lens size is perfect for balancing brightness and clarity with weight. Compact binoculars, which have smaller objective lenses, are often much dimmer. They’re not great if you want to truly spot and identify something in the field, though good reasons to use smaller binoculars do exist, as many backpackers and travel-light types will attest. (With that in mind, we tested compact binoculars in 2018, adding a recommendation for that category.)

Other no-go categories that we won’t be touching anytime soon are zoom binoculars or binoculars that include a digital camera. In the former case, you’ll end up with optics so compromised (less light-gathering ability, lower clarity) that the convenience of multiple levels of magnification would be quickly negated. In the latter, the quality of the cameras found inside these neither-here-nor-there binoculars is about a thousand years behind even the most basic modern smartphone. Stay away.

The good news is that the true technological improvements in binoculars over the past few years have come not in gimmicky features, but optics. Whereas 25 years ago you might have needed to spend $500 to get decent, waterproof binoculars from a factory in the Midwest, the manufacturing boom in China has brought us increasingly cheaper versions of familiar products, resulting in a crush of nearly identical binoculars, most of them featuring similar designs.


Left: Vintage (circa 1966) Carl Zeiss porro-prism binoculars. The Zeiss 8x50 binoculars cost $175 back then and were considered the best in the world. Right: Modern roof-prism binoculars. Dan Koeppel/NYT Wirecutter

Most of these binoculars now feature roof prisms, rather than old-fashioned porro prisms. Roof-prism binoculars, which you can identify easily by their “H” shape, draw light in along a straight path through the binoculars, from the objective lens to the eyepiece. Porro-prism binoculars, typically “A” shaped (see photo above), bounce the light along an angled path. Though either design can yield a great pair of binoculars, porro-prism units have, until recently, tended to be cheaper as well as heavier and less durable, though they could potentially yield a better image for less money. These days, roof-prism units are very inexpensive to manufacture, leading to the disappearance of high-end porro units except at the very lowest price points.

Another technology that has gotten less expensive is the ED lens (“ED” stands for “extra-low dispersion”). ED lenses generally weigh less and transmit light better than standard lenses. Though all of our tested binoculars performed well, of our four picks, only the top two use ED lenses.

The last element of today’s great, affordable binoculars is optical coatings. Lens coatings perform various functions, such as improving light transmission, reducing glare, and keeping colors true. Coating quality and levels used to be a key differentiator between cheap and expensive binoculars, but these days, lens coating technology has come down in price. All of our picks use the highest level, which is full multi-coating, meaning that all glass surfaces—most binoculars have between 10 and 16 such surfaces, called optical elements—are coated.

Another feature we deemed essential was proper functioning for users with glasses. Your binoculars work only when the proper distance between your eye and the binoculars’ ocular lens (the lens on the eyepiece end) is maintained. Glasses would increase that distance if you didn’t have a way to adjust the inboard or outboard position of the ocular lens. This feature is called eye relief, and the standard recommendation is that those who wear glasses need a minimum of 15 mm of adjustability. Old-fashioned eye relief meant a pair of rubber cups that rolled down to bring your glasses to the proper distance; those cups are still found on some binoculars, but we don’t recommend them, because they’ll eventually stiffen or even tear. Preferable are eyepieces that twist downward into a more compact position, a feature that all of our picks have.

But even with all these improvements, binoculars will vary in important ways. A few models close focus down to 5 feet away or even a little closer, though at least one popular model reaches no closer than 16 feet away, making them a no-go for seeing butterflies and other up-close objects. The field of view (how large an area you see when you look out into the distance) is also variable and differed by more than 20 percent across models tested for this review.

Below our midrange (roughly $150 to $350), the quality differences become apparent. Above our range’s higher end, you don’t necessarily get much, if any, performance advantage. Most brands we investigated tend to offer at least a couple different models of full-size (versus compact) binoculars, claim their models are waterproof (or at least water-resistant), and offer many models with a no-questions-asked lifetime and transferable return policy. Combine this with continuing improvements in glass and optical coating (or at least, a drop in manufacturing cost to the point where higher-quality lenses are now widely affordable), and we appear to be living in something of a golden age of binoculars—one birding website alone offers more than 150 models at our midrange prices.

To find a manageable group of testing finalists, we first eliminated companies that make only one model and that don’t exist outside of their Amazon presence. We also ruled out companies with just one model in our target price range, based on the logic that those binoculars are less likely to be widely available in the future, particularly if they get damaged and you need to return them. During our 2016 testing, this left us with 19 models of 8x42 binoculars, priced mostly under $350. We tested 10 compact binoculars in 2018, and then tested an additional six 8x42 models for a 2020 update.

Warranties

One question you’ll likely have when buying binoculars will be about warranties, especially for brands you’ve never heard of. And the question is valid.

Binoculars get beat up and dusty, and cheap ones go out of alignment in a few weeks or with a good knock, resulting in double vision or blurry patches. Nearly all companies I was able to reach offer a full, transferable, lifetime warranty of the “you can drive over it with a truck” type, but I recommend researching warranties before buying any model, because their details may change in the future.

But take some comfort in knowing that binoculars are now more rugged than ever. They’re about as waterproof as possible, meaning all of the pairs we recommend are sealed against dust and can handle immersion—though if you drop them into a lake, you’ll still need to dive because they don’t float, yet.

How we tested

I took my initial 19 models to a few of my favorite local Southern California beaches, mountains, and deserts for a couple weeks to get a feel for their handling characteristics and durability, and to get a rough feel for their images’ quality. But I couldn’t get an accurate handle on what actually looked better in such a familiar setting. My brain and its stored knowledge of overfamiliar birds take over, and binoculars are a lot harder to evaluate. That’s because with familiar objects, you know what you’re going to see even before you lift the binoculars.

The “act of seeing” is more a confirmation of a couple facts your brain stores, and identification becomes a result of quickly matching a minimum number of those facts with what your eyes tell you. Sure, mockingbirds have sharp, narrow bills, but that’s not usually what you look for in a distant mockingbird; you see a slender gray bird and confirm that it has black-and-white wings, and, hence, isn’t something else. Knowing that mockingbird is pretty much the only thing around with those features—and if nothing else jumps out—your identification of it as a mockingbird is instant. Your total time looking through the binoculars is maybe a second or two.

How much did the binoculars help? Probably not too much. That’s why to really test the quality and effectiveness of the equipment, you need to start with the unfamiliar, such as, say, a set of birds that you don’t see too often. Seeing unfamiliar birds requires the assimilation of a large number of unfamiliar marks all at once, preferably under physically demanding, or at least very different, circumstances.

With that in mind I selected my top five binoculars from the initial tests and took them along with me to unfamiliar territory in southern Mexico for advanced testing. Working in the field is the ultimate test for any pair of binoculars. The optics need to do some very heavy lifting—studying intricate patterns of white vermiculation on the upper back of a woodcreeper before the bird scoots around the trunk of a tree, for example—while my brain sorts through several near-identical species, something I don’t get to do back home.

Ultimately, I spent 10 days birding Mexico’s Sierra de Chiapas with the Alpen Shasta Ridge, Athlon Optics Midas ED, Eagle Optics Ranger ED, Nikon Monarch 5, and Vixen Optics Foresta DCF HR binoculars, spending a full day with each model.

For our 2020 update to this guide, I ventured farther south, to Costa Rica, birding the parks and country roads around the capital, San Jose. For this trip, I brought six models to test: the Celestron TrailSeeker ED, Nikon Monarch 5, Bushnell Engage ED, Fujinon KF, Pentax S-Series, and Vortex Diamondback. I spent hours testing each pair of binoculars in field conditions. I tested the binoculars in conditions including light and heavy rain (at Carara National Park), high humidity, and both low and bright light (under rainforest canopy and in open savannah). Upon returning home, I took the top models to the Salton Sea for ultrabright (and very warm) conditions.

Top pick: Athlon Optics Midas ED


Rozette Rago/NYT Wirecutter

Top pick

The binoculars I use day to day as a professional ornithologist are the Leica Ultravid 8x42 model, which I purchased for around $2,500. Yet when I looked through the Athlon Optics Midas ED pair, I could not tell much difference between them and my Leicas, which cost around 10 times as much.

What makes the Athlon Midas ED binoculars great? For starters, their brightness. A lot of birding and using binoculars in general involves looking out or up at something much brighter, like the sky, or darker, such as into a dense thicket. Just as your autofocus camera can’t figure out how to illuminate something against a bright (or overcast) sky, binoculars may have difficulty mustering the light needed to brighten the distant object you’re trying to identify. Also tough is the inverse of this situation, looking into dark, dense vegetation, a situation in which you need all the light-gathering ability the binoculars can give you.

The Athlon Midas ED performed well on both fronts. For example, several other models tested would not allow me to differentiate throat coloration of warblers in treetops early in the morning. With the Athlon set, it was almost as if the glaring, whitish background of the sky wasn’t there—the colors popped to life.

During testing in Southern California and southern Mexico, a few other models—including the Bushnell Legend L Series, Celestron TrailSeeker, Carson 3D, and Nikon Monarch 5—proved very good at bringing in color under harsh conditions. Neither the Nikon nor the Carson model had the wide field of view at distance that the Athlon Midas ED boasted. The Nikon was 361 feet at 1,000 yards versus 426 feet for the Athlons, Bushnells, and Celestrons, which had the widest fields of view of the models I tested. The Carson 3D binoculars were impressively sharp and easily as bright as the Athlon set, but they felt almost as if they had tunnel vision, likely because their field of view was around 20 percent narrower than that of the Athlons.

These field-of-view differences proved more noticeable when I was trying to differentiate spot-breasted wrens from rufous-and-white wrens as they crawled through vine tangles in southern Mexico, for example; the Nikon pair’s narrower field, which had otherwise excellent glass, seemed to require more time to find the birds than the Athlon Midas ED did (and tellingly, by the end of the trip, I was grabbing the Athlon pair each morning).

One of the best features of the Athlon Midas ED was the ease and precision of adjusting the focus. It smoothly and accurately adjusts across a wide range of focal depths. Some models, like the Nikon ProStaff 5, focused very quickly, but that often translated to loss of detail at distance, or basically, the smooshing together of anything more than a couple hundred feet away into one focusing position. This sounds confusing, but it makes sense if you think of a focusing knob the way you might a volume control. Less rotation between silence and loudness means you can get between the extremes quickly, but you may not be able to get to precisely the level you want; on the other hand, a volume knob with too much rotation takes forever to adjust. With binoculars you want a happy medium that focuses fast but allows for granular accuracy. In other models, even within the same brand (for example, the Nikon ProStaff 7S), this focusing issue was less noticeable, and they performed well in this regard. In still others, such as the now-discontinued Opticron Explorer WA Oasis-C pair, the knob was sluggish, requiring a good crank around several times to focus on anything near or far.

Close focusing is key when you’re trying to see detail on butterflies, wildflowers, and the like. Our pick gets as near as 6.5 feet, and though a few binoculars focused closer than that, several contenders didn’t get anywhere near getting near. The Nikon ProStaff 5, for example, couldn’t bring objects any closer than 16 feet into focus.

Athlon covers most of its products with a transferable lifetime warranty, though their durability leaves little to be desired. During one incident in Mexico, I accidentally dropped the Athlon Midas ED binoculars onto a dirt road (right onto the focus knob), brushed them off, and found that they worked just fine.

How the Athlon Midas HD binoculars have held up

Over the years, multiple Wirecutter staff members have also put their own pairs of the Athlon Midas ED binoculars to use for bird watching, hiking, and exploring the outdoors. They have been pleased with both the durability and optics.

Senior staff writer Tim Heffernan says, “Versus the compact binocs I’ve long used, they let in so much more light, so I can use them deeper into dawn and dusk, when birds are really active.” And Ria Misra, supervising editor of travel and outdoors coverage, notes that her Athlons still focus as sharply and clearly as when she got them, despite subjecting them to five years’ worth of cross-country road trips and national park campouts.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

The Athlon Midas ED come with a set of press-in lens caps for the objective (larger) lenses. While the press-ins make for a sleek look, we found that they tended to fall out, leaving the lenses unprotected. Still, that was the only (minor) flaw in a product that was otherwise close to perfect.

As a more general comment on the current state of binocular manufacturing: With things changing so rapidly, consumers should check that the pair they end up with is the same high-quality model we’ve tested. So many new binocular brands and models are in the market now, and some confusion is inevitable. Athlon Optics, a relatively new company, currently has 20 different models and seven distinct binocular lines. If you’re the kind of person who prefers the stability (and availability) of a better-known brand, look toward our runner-up and budget picks.

Runner-up: Celestron TrailSeeker ED


Rozette Rago/NYT Wirecutter

Runner-up

For a smaller grip

Celestron TrailSeeker ED

These binoculars are a close second to the Athlons, with just-as-clear optics, solid construction, and easy-to-use focusing. They have a slightly smaller grip than the sturdier Athlons, and they cost more.

Like the Athlon Optics Midas pair, the Celestron TrailSeeker ED binoculars are optically sharp, well constructed, and easy to focus quickly on the trail. The primary difference in these two sets of binoculars—apart from the TrailSeeker’s higher price—is that the TrailSeeker is sized slightly down from the Midas, so if you prefer a smaller grip, this is the pair for you.

In its optics, the Celestron TrailSeeker offers a view remarkably similar to that of the Athlons. Both binoculars have crystal-clear optics that stay sharp right up to the edges of the field of view. Both also offer excellent views at close range and far range. The Athlon Midas and the Celestron TrailSeeker can focus down to 6.5 feet, so they’re ideal for checking out butterflies, plants, and other things on the ground that you might want to approach but not touch. For farther-off objects, the Athlons and the Celestrons also offer identically wide fields of view of 426 feet at 1,000 yards—which means they’re great for locating fast-moving birds in dense foliage or for scanning the sky for raptors.


The grip of the Trailseekers (right) is more compact than the grip of the Midas (left). Rozette Rago/NYT Wirecutter

At 23.5 ounces, the Celestron TrailSeeker ED binoculars are slightly lighter than the 25-ounce Athlon Midas set. This difference of less than 2 ounces isn’t very noticeable when you’re picking up either pair, except for the fact that the Midas’s grip is slightly sturdier. But if you have smaller hands or are also juggling a field notebook (or a cup of coffee) along with your binoculars, you may find the narrower grip of the TrailSeeker preferable. You will, however, have to pay between $30 and $80 more for them than you would pay for our top pick.

After three years of using the TrailSeeker binoculars, our long-term tester reports that they are still holding up well and the optics remain sharp and clear. Our tester has owned both the TrailSeeker and the Midas and finds that they’ve both worn equally well over the years. While she’s never dropped either pair, she notes that she now prefers the TrailSeeker binoculars when she knows she’s going to be walking long distances since they feel more secure in her smaller hands.

Care, maintenance, and use

A simple trick for spotting stuff faster with binoculars is to not hold your binoculars up to your eyes and then* *pan and scan for what you’re trying to spot. You’ll never get there. Instead, with the naked eye, stare up at what you want to see, then raise the binoculars to your gaze. That’ll allow whatever you’re looking at to instantly pop into your magnified view.

As for cleaning your binoculars’ lenses, don’t make the mistake of breathing on and then rubbing the lenses with something like a microfiber cloth, lens wipe or—heaven forbid—your shirtsleeve. Doing so may lead to the dust that’s already on your lens leaving tiny scratches. Instead, start with a lens pen or bulb-type blower to remove that dust, then go ahead and use either lens wipes or fluid and a microfiber cloth. For more info, visit our guide to the best camera cleaning gear (the routine for cleaning binoculars is fundamentally the same).

The competition

8x42 binoculars

Alpen Wings ED: The company that made these binoculars, our former upgrade pick, is no longer in business.

Bushnell Engage ED: This pair performed well optically, but I found the eyecups too shallow to get a good “lock” on whatever I was seeing, since too much light was seeping through the edges.

Carson VP: Our former budget pick, it has been discontinued.

Carson 3D: A very small field of view produced tunnel vision, so these aren’t useful for close-distance viewing.

Nikon ProStaff 7S: These were very acceptable binoculars in terms of optics, but had a problem with loose eyecups that pushed down too easily. Also, the rubberized coating was so tacky that it kept pulling back on my fingertips (under the fingernail) as I was working the focus knob. It wasn’t exactly painful, but it wasn’t comfortable either.

Opticron Oregon 4 LE WP: Optical flaws included some distortion and glare. These binoculars had ergonomic issues, too, including a strap hook in an odd spot that interfered with the eyecup cover and eyecup focus wheel.

Pentax 8x42 S-Series: These binoculars felt bulky compared with the Athlon Midas and Celestron TrailSeeker and featured eyecups that were too short and loose.

Vortex Optics Diamondback: This pair’s light weight made it suitable for more casual observations, but it wasn’t as solid-feeling or as good at focusing over long distances as the Athlon Midas or the Celestron TrailSeeker.

Vortex Optics Crossfire: These seemed like a throwback to the past, with a cheap, flimsy feel, poor distance resolution, and limited low-light clarity.

We also tested and dismissed the following 8x42 models, which are no longer available: the Alpen Shasta Ridge, the Bushnell Legend L Series, the Eagle Optics Denali, the Eagle Optics Ranger HD, the Fujinon KF, the Nikon Monarch 3 and Monarch 5, the Nikon ProStaff 5, the Opticron Discovery WP PC, the Opticron Explorer WA Oasis-C, the Opticron T3 Trailfinder WP, the Vixen Optics Foresta DCF HR.

Compact binoculars

The Pentax Papilio II 8.5x21 and the Nikon ProStaff 8x25 ATB are both “chunky” compacts with offset eye-pieces (as opposed to the more common roof prism design), and may be more comfortable for some users because these pairs can be easier to grip. Unfortunately, the Papilio took far too long to focus (though on the plus side, it’s marked “extremely-close focusing,” and it is), and though the Nikons were satisfactory, I found myself getting slight eye strain when focusing on distant objects, like ducks floating on a lake.

The Carson RD 8x26 waterproof, Levenhuk Karma Pro 8x25, and Maven C.2 10x28 are part of a slew of “new compact” binoculars that resemble shrunken-down versions of the full-size 8x42 models, but are about two-thirds the size and weight. At this size, though, they’re too large to slip into most pockets, unless you have a huge coat on, taking away the very portability that we were looking for. I also found the quality lacking across the board—eyepieces that wouldn’t stop spinning (Maven), eyecups that didn’t sit flush with the eye (Levenhuk), and distortion of distant objects (Carson).

We also tested and dismissed the following compact or large-compact models, which are no longer available: Athlon Talos 8x32, Minox BF 8x25, Minox BV 8x33, and the Vortex Diamondback Classic 8x32.

This article was edited by Ria Misra and Christine Ryan.