An important thing to consider when looking at the size of a compact binocular is how small they are when they are folded. When you are are looking through them, just how small they are is not that important, but size is far more important when you carrying them around with you. Different designs of compacts fold up in different ways and this can make a big difference is their size. The twist-up eyecups look to be made from a very hard plastic that have a very thin rubber coating on them. The ocular lens has a diameter of 11mm and the eyecup has an external diameter of 37mm, which are both considerably smaller than what you find on most full sized binoculars, but is about average for a compact. This smaller size and very thin rubber covering mean that they are not the most comfortable eyecups that I have ever used, but any discomfort is only really noticeable when you push them quite firmly against your face. Slightly more manageable as an option for birders is the retro-looking Celestron Up Close G2 10-30x50 binocular, though it’s still heavy compared with what we have here due to that extra zoom power and larger objective lens. If weight is an issue, a zoom monocular is another alternative. Here Nikon’s arch-rival Canon provides one in its PowerShot Zoom Monocular, on which a minimum 100mm focus setting is adjustable to a 800mm equivalent. It can even capture stills and videos to microSD card too, though requires a battery to power it. Thankfully these aren’t just for night manoeuvres, offering a nicely detailed and bright image during the day, although you’ll need a tripod for the best results.

An optional red-dot finderscope (not included) can also be attached to the rail, to help you find objects fast, if you’re aiming for a serious, tripod-based setup. Another downside to them not being fully covered in rubber is that there is more chance of them making a louder sound if something like your watch or more commonly a ring on your finger strikes against them. Rubber armour dampens down the sound and helps to ensure that you don't frighten away easily spooked animals like birds or deer. There is no mention in any of their marketing of them being either water or fog proof and so I must assume that they are neither. In this price range, not many binoculars are fully waterproof or fogproof and so this is fairly understandable, but it would be nice to know that they were at least a little "weather proof" - anyway I am sure that they would survive a little light rain, but to be completely safe just make sure that you don't get them really wet in very bad weather. Magnification: 7x | Objective lens diameter: 21mm | Prism: Roof | Field of view: 7.7° | Weight: 250gAs you would expect, keeping the image nice and still becomes harder and harder as you increase the magnification settings. At 24x I was able to the image still enough to take in all the details of what I was looking, but I had to concentrate on staying very still as even the smallest movement has a big impact on the amount of image shake. This is fine for short bursts, when you just want to take in a bit of detail, but is definitely not something that you would want to do over longer periods. This model is the ideal companion when spectating sports events, nature-watching or pursuing other outdoor activities.

Below is a table comparing this Nikon EagleView Zoom with a selection of other compact binoculars. The very top of the range Swarovski 8x20B compact binoculars as well as a few others like the Pentax 9x28 DCF, Minox 10x25 BV BRW's, Kowa 8x25 BD and the Steiner 8.5x26 Wildlife Pro. All lenses and prisms are multilayer-coated for brighter views and the body is a light-weight of only 305g. With their eye-cups fully retracted, they have a length of 11.9cm (4.7in), this increases to 12.4cm (4.9n) when you fully twist out the eyecups. Fully folded, the width of the binocular is 9.2cm (3.6in), fully opened it is 11cm (4.3in). Their height is 6.3cm (2.5in), which once again all on the larger end of the scale for a full compact binocular but nothing excessively so. To minimize reflection on the lens surfaces and ensure clear, sharp images, anti-reflective coatings are often applied. These anti-reflection coatings are very important as part of the light that passes through any lens is reflected by the front (incident light) and rear (exiting light) surfaces. This reduces the amount of light passing through the lens and if this transmittance is very bad, the image you see will be darker than on binoculars that transmit more light. Also, the reflected light may cause ghosting and flaring, affecting image contrast.At 24x Magnification:When you increased to their maximum level of 24x the Exit Pupil reduces to just over 1 (25/24) which means that not a lot of light that enters the binocular will reach your eyes. With these Nikon binoculars, the minimum distance that you can focus on an object is a 4 meters (13.1ft) away, which once again is not great and quite a bit further than the best. I consider anything under 6ft to be very good. So if you are looking for a compact binocular specifically for things like observing butterflies then I do not recommend getting these. Rather take a look at these close focusing binoculars. As you increase the magnification level and zoom in on an object, the FOV reduces even further. However this is not as big a problem as I would suggest the best way to use these zoom binoculars is to have them set at 8x to locate the object that you want to observe and the once you have it in your field of view, you can then zoom into it to get a more detailed view. All lenses and prisms are multilayer-coated for brighter images and the body is a lightweight 305 g/10.8 oz. At 16x Magnification:When you increase their magnification to 16x their Exit Pupil reduces to 1.56 (25/16) which means that even less light will be getting to your eyes.

Some cheap optics use coatings on the lenses to artificially tint the view, for example you find many cheap binoculars with ruby coated lenses which are used to filter red to compensate for their poor-quality optics that do not properly converge the color spectrum. Thankfully this is not the case with these and I thought that the colors that are produced by the EagleView look and feel natural, but with possibly a tiny bit less saturation than on my control binoculars. I doubt if this very thin rubber armouring would protect the optics very much from damage, but it does make a nice grippy surface to hold onto and is well placed for this. The diopter adjustment like most binoculars is a ring located on the right barrel just under the eyecup and is used to correctly set up and focus the binoculars to your particular eyesight and only really needs to be done once when use them for the first time, unless the setting is moved accidentally or you share your binoculars with someone who's setting is not the same as yours. When set to a magnification level of 8x, their field of view is 80m at 100m / 240ft at 1000 yards (4.6°) - which, for a what at this setting effectively an 8x25 binocular is not very good. To put this into context, the Steiner 8.5x26 Wildlife Pro has a FOV of 333ft at 1000 yards and the Kowa 8x25 BD has a FOV of 331ft at 1000 yards and even the Minox 10x25 BV BRW which has a magnification of 10x has a FOV of 290ft at 1000 yards. Canon offers a good range of image stabilised binoculars but higher magnifications are where you’ll benefit from it the most. Two caveats though: the high magnification makes for a narrow field of view (you see less at any given time) so it’s harder to spot the bird, star, whatever in the first place. And combined with the 32mm objective lenses, they don’t gather enough light for low light use at dusk. However, they’re great for shake-free stargazing and a delight for detailed moon gazing.Optics-wise they use premium glass (Schott HT) for the roof prisms with phase-correcting coating P40 and HighLux-System HLS. This makes for a pin-sharp image without the loss of contrast that cheaper roof prisms can suffer from. Lenses have reliable HDC Plus-multicoating and AquaDura lens coating for maximum protection, while anti-reflective coatings make for great low-light capabilities. You should be under no illusions - these are far from being the best binoculars in the world, but having said that these Nikon EagleView Zoom binoculars are far, far cheaper than the top of the range compacts and to be fair to them they are not at all bad and I would say easily outperform their price tag. If you can live with their weak points and are looking for a cheap pair of zoom binoculars then the Nikon EagleView Zoom 8-24x25 CF maybe just for you. I could not find any details as to exactly what the interior frame or the exterior body is made of, but the exterior looks to be made from some sort of hard plastic. Nikon state that they have added a carbon fibre material in parts of the grip which they say enhances durability. I am guessing that this is in the parts of the barrels that have a thin dark grey rubber coating on them, which you can see as being the dark sections on the image below: They’re lovely to use with a bright image that’s well magnified. They’re great outdoorsy all-rounders. A close focus range of just 1.9m means you can magnify even quite near objects. Nikon Sportstar Zoom 8-24x25 binoculars come in a portable and compact body, and employ a zoom lever on the top of the body which gives a smooth 8-24x zooming experience. The focusing ring can be operated while looking through the binoculars during observation.