Review on Brunton F TRUARC15 TruArc 15 Compass by Chris Barreto

With the exception of the azimuth scale, this is a well designed compass and the materials appear to be of good quality. If it works as intended I would save and use it. Unfortunately, it has three main disadvantages that make it slow and difficult to get an accurate and reliable bearing. In fact, they are so bad that I will return the compass. If you really need accurate observations, don't rely on this compass. Here are the shortcomings that led me to this opinion: - Bearings are difficult to read through the magnifying glass "bubble". Oddly enough, it's designed to be easy to read the back bearing, but the direction you're actually looking is so hard to read that it's actually faster to just take the back bearing and do the math find out the direction you're looking. The needle is so badly out of balance that tilting the compass out of plane really helps to allow the needle to spin freely. This works great keeping the compass at waist level when you just need to know where north is. This is a big problem when trying to aim accurately with a mirror. This is because the built-in spirit level does NOT allow the needle to rotate freely. So you have to guess how it works, NOT holding it straight while looking in the mirror. And if you make a mistake, there's no visual clue. The needle just gets stuck in the wrong position. It's very, very easy to get inaccurate readings! In my opinion, this deficiency renders the compass almost useless for quick and accurate observations. Declination adjustment is almost impossible. Several reviews criticize the tool-less design. But I have an older Brunton of the same design and it works great. Manufacturing quality issue. The parts are slightly out of round, causing them to be tight in some rotational positions and too loose in others. If the parts were round and the gaps correct everything would work fine - and it does on my old Brunton. It's just poor build quality. Overall, this is a pretty good compass that suffers so badly from poor workmanship and odd scales that it shouldn't be used in situations where your safety depends on reliable and accurate observations.