Best Lightweight Binoculars for ~$200

I got the sightron blue sky sII. No complaints but it's too big and heavy. Wondering if anyone has a more compact recommendation?

Thanks again.
 
I also use the Steiners. And an identical set of Steiners for back up. 8x is the minimum I need for hunting out west here, 200-300+ yards is normal kill range for us. I find the color and contrast of the Steiners to be very good for marine or hunting use, which I do both.


-X
 
I had an older compact Steiner and I wasn't that impressed with them. That may not apply to the newer models but I haven't looked through any of them; I replaced them with some Zeiss compacts which were a lot better IMO.

As others have said, the 8x30 Military/Marine is a nice pretty nice bino for the money. They only weigh 17oz so going with a compact isn't going to save you a huge amount of weight.
 
You may be able to find a Nikon Monarch 5 near your range. Also, if you don't mind porro prism, try Nikon Action Extreme 7x35...both models are weather and fog proof and have great optics.
 
Kirk_Ferentz said:
It looks like steiner has a lot of compact, lightweight options -- I might look into those.
Click to expand...

I had a pair of Steiner Predator Pro 10x26 that I picked up not long ago and were well within your budget. They were a decent value compared to similar sub-$200 compacts I have sampled but I'm really not big on that class at all and they ended up being catch & releases along with the Minox and Pentax binos I bought around the same time frame during my brief experiment with compacts. I found some compacts I like but they were all well outside the price range that I wanted to spend on a compact. I found I prefered 32mm options over the slightly smaller compacts primarily because of the ergos the bang for the buck views they provided. I ended up with some 6x32 Vortex Vipers as my small binos that I got on a closeout and they perform well above their cost. The only thing I did end up keeping out of the compact group was a Minox 8x25 Macroscope Monocular because they really do take up less real estate.

I spend a lot of time reading on the 24hourcampfire optics subforum also and recommend it highly as well as the SWFA opticstalk forum. Many of the optics dealers sell their demo units at deep discount so you might want to explore those options. PM me if you want some directions.
 
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