BirderSpouse from United States, NY Public Profile

Purchased these for my wife to counter a hand tremor, but didn't tell her what they were or why they looked so strange. I had her sight something with IS off, and then had her turn them on. The look on her face after experiencing their rock-steadiness was worth every penny. I'm no aficionado, but spent some time looking for chromatic aberration or other faults, and could not find them. The first level IS (scanning) is all one needs most of the time, although second level (target) is even more steady. I set aside the individual eyepiece caps and put on a single cap assembly like those on our Nikon Monarchs - works great and can't get lost.

I did a lot of research for upgrading my wife's scope for birding, which I am glad to say led to this scope. It has been out on several day-trip car-based expeditions and has performed very well for her. I set this up side-by-side to compare to her much older Raven scope - the improvements are clear across the board. Color, brightness, resolution, lack of chromatic aberration and viewing comfort (including eye relief) are excellent across the impressive 25-75x zoom range. For example, image quality when looking at a white birch tree trunk (with many very fine white lines) was amazing at full zoom at 100 yards. Focus is very precise with the dual-knob system. Fit and finish are also excellent, and it looks quite nice as well. (We did have to snug the eyepiece threads a bit tighter when it first arrived, but that should be part of any new optic checkout upon arrival.) OP price was excellent and there was a 10% off code on top of that for even better value. Very happy with this scope.