Good as an inexpensive spotting scope - Crosman 10-20x50mm Spotting Scope

Just received this, so only a first impression (I looked at a hummingbird in my back yard and the roof of my house), but for under $100, it will do fine.

There is no eye cup around the ocular lens, just a flat rubbery surface. That's great if you wear glasses; if not you might miss the eye cup. The eye relief is OK but not generous: at 10x is enough that my glasses just barely didn't touch the eyepiece. At 20x, my glasses are pressed against the eyepiece to see the entire field.

The little included tripod is not bad. Azimuth friction (panning) doesn't seem to be adjustable, but out of the box it was just right: smooth but not too loose. Hope it won't loosen up too fast. The elevation adjustment has a nice bit of fluidity, not just tight or loose like some small tripods I've used, so you can scan up and down without needing to keep your hand on it at all times.

The helical focuser is fairly stiff to turn but not so much that the tripod shook when adjusting the focus. The image is just slightly "soft." I could never get what looked like *perfect* focus. If the scope cost much more, I might complain, but for this price it is acceptable.

Closest focal distance is about 18 feet at both 10x and 20x. The zoom is not quite parfocal: after focusing at 10x, zooming to 20x required a very small focal adjustment.

At 10x, the image was bright, but at 20x it became somewhat dim. This is the smallest spotting scope I've ever used, so I don't know if that is inevitable with a 50 mm scope or if the lens quality is partly to blame.

The best thing about this scope is that it is well-baffled. The entire inside of the barrel behind the objective lens is threaded and painted black. When I pointed it as close as I dared to the sun (about 10°) the image had a bright internal reflection across the field of view, but when I turned away to about 20° or 25° the reflection went away entirely. Considering that I own a pair of inexpensive 7 x 50 binoculars that are so poorly baffled that you basically can't see anything if facing toward the sun AT ALL and some more expensive binoculars that aren't as well baffled as this scope, I consider this design excellent in that regard. Unless you are pointed almost directly into the sun or bright reflections off water, you will be fine.

You would not confuse this scope with an ED glass unit costing over five times as much, but for the price it is OK.