Cheaper Binoculars with compass - worth it?

[ltcom]

I have cheapo ones that are excellent and are better than my 3x more expensive land binos.

 

[Iliade]

I have a pair which look identical to those sold by force 4 for £99 and they are excellent binoculars. They have remained watertight for about ten years and even I have failed to ruin the coating, the exit pupil is large so you don't have to be looking directly down the centreline of each side to see a good image. The compass is ok, but I could only use a binocular compass on a ship or ashore anyway*. Focus free is brilliant. Yes they are not as perfect an image as my more expensive land optics, but for the money and the job in hand they are great.

* I have found that holding the very end of the binos yields better image stability than I can achieve by holding them 'properly.'

 

[MikeBz]

I bought a pair of Tasco Offshore 54 bins (built-in compass) on EBay 13 years ago for £50, still happy with them, although I've never had the opportunity to compare them with a £400 product (and nor am I likely to).

 

[crewman]

I have a pair of Bynolits which I find excellent. A charter boat had a fairly cheap pair of bins (cannot remember make) and the compass damping was so poor as to be useless.

 

[John 32i]

Konus Tornado are very good...built in compass and scale - I think they are sold under other brand names from various marine outlets for less than £100

 

[Spirit (of Glenans)]

Never did understand the desire for bins with a compass built in.
All you're ever likely to get with a mishmash like that is inferior performance from both.

Firstly you do not need the 'accuracy' you might imagine a compass in a binocular might provide. A hand bearing compass is perfectly adequate and it is likely that with much, even any movement of the boat the built-in compass would be hard to read, if readable at all.

I'd strongly suggest you spend as much as you can afford on a decent pair of bins with an objective lens of 40mm utter minimum, no more than 7x mag , plus a half decent hand bearing compass.
The combination is likely to seriously outperform any cobbled-together bundle that's neither fish nor fowl.

IMHO a pair of bins is much more efficient than the naked eye in low light or bad visibility conditions or when trying to confirm the validity of a distant landmark. Bins with a compass speed up the taking of bearings in these cases.
I have a pair I bought from Lidl probably ten years ago for about €50. They're still perfect.

 

[MikeBz]

I certainly wouldn't consider bins with compass built in as a substitute for a hand-bearing compass, but as a supplement they are useful for those situations where the object you are trying to get a (possibly rough) bearing on is too distant for the naked eye.

 

[KompetentKrew]

I have a pair of Bynolits which I find excellent. A charter boat had a fairly cheap pair of bins (cannot remember make) and the compass damping was so poor as to be useless.

Bynolyt Searangers have the reputation for being RNLI issue, and have won some Best Buy awards in yachting magazine reviews in the past, but they're closer to £200 than OP's declared budget of £100. At one time they came up pretty regularly secondhand on eBay for less than £100, but less so recently I think.

Mind you, I see they now have a 25-year warranty so perhaps worth the price. I like mine, too.

• Bynolyt Searanger II Binoculars
• Bynolyt SeaRanger III Binoculars

 

[langstonelayabout]

I have had a pair of these for the last 5 years and they are great! MINOX BN 7x50 DCM Binoculars black with multifunction: Amazon.co.uk: Camera & Photo

Minox are known for good optics and these are good, robust and waterproof with a built in fluxgate compass. Worth the £400 I paid.

 

[Praxinoscope]

Beyond the physics (optimum light gathering, correction of aberrations etc.) the choice of binoculars seems to be a very personal decision, I bought the Gael Force 7x50 floating bin's with built -in compass 3 years ago, I had been looking to replace an ageing and heavy par of Zeiss 7x50 that had travel with me for years, so had been trying out various options, although never really considered a pair with compass.
A friend had just bought a pair of the Gael Force (I think they are also marketed under other brands) and he was raving about them so I borrowed them for a couple of hours, I was impressed with the bright, clear and high resolution image, collimating was excellent (unlike many I had tried over the preceding period), light weight, waterproof, floating and found the built-in compass more useful than I expected and at the £100 mark excellent value.
Whether they will last as long as my old Zeiss I doubt but I can replace these thee or four times over the years if I have to and it will still be cheaper than buying new Zeiss, Leitz etc. and IMHO they are easily optically equal.

 

[johnalison]

Never did understand the desire for bins with a compass built in.
All you're ever likely to get with a mishmash like that is inferior performance from both.

Firstly you do not need the 'accuracy' you might imagine a compass in a binocular might provide. A hand bearing compass is perfectly adequate and it is likely that with much, even any movement of the boat the built-in compass would be hard to read, if readable at all.

I'd strongly suggest you spend as much as you can afford on a decent pair of bins with an objective lens of 40mm utter minimum, no more than 7x mag , plus a half decent hand bearing compass.
The combination is likely to seriously outperform any cobbled-together bundle that's neither fish nor fowl.

I agree. I have borrowed binos with compasses and in a seaway the accuracy is no different to that of a hand-bearing compass. There is one situation where I can see their value. This is when an object's bearing has been established from radar or AIS/GPS and you could use this bearing to search the horizon for the target. This has not occurred often enough for me to tempt me into buying one, though

 

[Red Panda]

Try before you buy - I was ready to splash out on a pair of Steiners till I tried them at the boat show, and found it really hard to see the compass even in bright daylight.
I bought a pair of the sub-£100 Gael Force ones instead, they do all I want and I won't be utterly distraught if I lose them.

 

[Hydrozoan]

I certainly wouldn't consider bins with compass built in as a substitute for a hand-bearing compass, but as a supplement they are useful for those situations where the object you are trying to get a (possibly rough) bearing on is too distant for the naked eye.

Useful also to efficiently direct someone with less acute sight to a distant object, once spotted.

 

[WoodyP]

I have a cheap set which are adequate. Just. A friend has a cheap set which are useless at night as they have coated lenses which block out colour definition. I rather like to see green and red at night.

 

[Yngmar]

I've got these in 2015 for £125: Danubia Nautical 7x 50mm Binoculars with Compass: Amazon.co.uk: Camera & Photo

After five years of cruising, they're a bit bashed around but still working fine. Fell off the cockpit seat a couple times and the reticule inside rotated, which I could probably fix but not bothered. Everything else works fine though. Can't say we actually use the compass feature at all anymore though, so next time I'd buy some without that. Even the battery for the compass light still is the first one

The Celestron I tried before the above went back to Amazon post-haste as the compass feature was too awkward to use.

 

[Greenheart]

Bynolyt Searangers have the reputation for being RNLI issue, but they're closer to £200 than OP's declared budget of £100.

Mind you, I see they now have a 25-year warranty so perhaps worth the price. I like mine, too.

Got my pair late last year but only had my first chance to use them last month. Dazzlingly good. I have some terrific old ex-RN Zeiss binoculars too, but I don't ever remember experiencing such clarity and such a sense of relative distance as the Bynolyts give. I mainly bought them for their reputed durability, flotation, waterproofing and guarantee, but the quality of view is also better than I believed possible.

I just need one of those gadgets to attach my phone's camera lens behind an eyepiece, and I'll be able to record the brilliance.

 

[Crazy-Diamond]

Another vote for the Bynolt Searangers. I like the inbuilt compass, along with the illumination red LED when you need it at night. Sometimes I want to establish a bearing to something (a bouy) that is not easily seen with the naked eye - so an inbuilt compass does that for me. The optical clarity is astonishingly good. Well worth the money.

 

[[70521]]

if you’re and old f@rt, it’s usually cheaper to buy a 32mm or 40mm pair. You cannot use the 50mm amount of light anyway as your eyes simply are not able to after you age (gracefully ). if you’re 20, then go fo the 50mm and rejoice.

As an old f@rt I actually want more light hitting my retina rather than less, especially at night.

 

[Scomber]

I've had a pair of Fujinons for years. Can't remember how much I paid, but they didn't break the bank - and my bank is pretty fragile. All I can say is they do exactly what they're supposed to. I have a vague recollection of them being a yottie comic recommendation.

+1

 

[KAM]

I have a pair of the heavy rubberised ones that appear in various guises (mine are actually from Aldi about 12years ago) they are OK as simple bins and the bearing ability was very useful, but the compass no longer rotates. Also the rubber grip went sticky and had to be cleaned off with alcohol.

I've got a pair of those too. Very clear image and the compass works very well. Much easier than a hand bearing compass. Mine are also sticky. Did the alcohol work.