Review on 🔭 High-performance Pentax AD 8x25 WP Binoculars: Perfect for Outdoor Live Events, Travel, and Mountaineering by Dang Linh Ngan ᠌

Name: 🔭 High-performance Pentax AD 8x25 WP Binoculars: Perfect for Outdoor Live Events, Travel, and Mountaineering
Item: 🔭 High-performance Pentax AD 8x25 WP Binoculars: Perfect for Outdoor Live Events, Travel, and Mountaineering
Rating: 4

September 30, 2022

I am satisfied, the product fully corresponds to the description.

After the modernization of the eyecups, the use of attachments for lenses, many shortcomings were corrected. I had to sacrifice brightness for the sake of contrast and sharpness. It has become much more pleasant to use, whitishness has decreased in difficult lighting conditions, sharpness and contrast have increased.
In general, the picture is clear, with correct color reproduction, with good sharpness throughout the entire focus range. Chromatic aberrations are average (birds turn into red-green parrots along the edge :) but in the center they are almost invisible, there are practically no purple halos, pincushion distortion within 5 percent which is very good, coma and astigmatism are well corrected in the central region (50 percent of the area) of the star in beautiful, neat sparks in this zone of vision (they become small comets along the edge, in the blur zone). It is pleasant to look at the moon, everything is clear and sharp, there is a slight chromatism along the edge of the disk. But it was problematic to watch from the hands tied to a photo tripod. All of the above is after the upgrade.
Value for money in 2022 for C grade. Long-term observation is limited more by the stamina of your hands than your eyes.
The rating is reduced for the price-quality ratio and the shortcomings, for $ 140 that it is sold on Amazon is a good option, provided that you get a normal one with good alignment. The mistake when choosing is that you focus on the price in 2022 and expect quality, because its price is 350-400 dollars. For that kind of money on Amazon, you could buy a much better quality binoculars in terms of optics and manufacturing. Among other manufacturers, there are options with slightly worse image quality but at a price 2 times less.
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Pros

Compactness, mobility, correct color reproduction, good sharpness in the center, large focusing range (in monocular mode or if you don’t find fault with collimation, you can focus a meter from the object).

Cons

1. Bad eyecups, the extension point is 5 mm behind them, that is, when viewing, the eyes do not press against them (and if you try to press it, it feels like something that constantly interferes with eyelashes and eyelids climb into the image field). Naturally, at the same time, you have light in the eyes from the side. 2. There is no blackening inside the body (in the area of the focus lens stroke) and an excess of white shiny grease (it does not appear immediately, but during operation). Accordingly, in backlight and in bright clouds, this reduces the contrast, the image becomes whitish. In the eyepiece in bright light, in addition to the pupil, the design of the prism block is displayed. 3. Small depth of field (depth of field), it is difficult to focus (you feel like an eye surgeon :)). For example, to accurately focus on objects 30 and 28 meters (trunk and crown foliage of a tree), you have to turn the focus wheel with 'micron' movements. It also complicates the diopter adjustment. 4. No tripod thread. 5. The neck strap is hard, narrow (the effect of it is as if you are not wearing a compact, but a kilogram binocular). 6. Lack of lens wipes at such a cost, minor flaws of the Chinese assembly (the rubber is not glued to the body, excess lubricant inside) 7. With such a small lens diameter and a field of view of less than 100 meters, a sharp image occupies approximately 80 percent of the lens area. Pentax engineers have clearly made it easy for themselves when designing optics. 8. My copy is poorly aligned, when viewing the starry sky, if you close your eyes after focusing and then open it, you can see how the star doubles and then the eyes force the image to one point, which leads to severe eye strain. At first I could not understand the reason that my eyes get tired, thanks to astroforums. In fact, they sold me low-quality binoculars.