There’s a great many uses and applications for monoculars. Essentially they represent the smallest optical tools that allow you to magnify distant objects in order to see them better.
If you think about it, a monocular is like half a binocular. They’re manufactured by the same brands that make the best known binoculars using the same technologies, and are optically very similar. The major difference obviously being that you can use them only for one eye at a time.
In that way, they’re similar to spotting scopes but are much smaller, perfectly fitting into a pocket, and can be used without any support.
When looking for a monocular to buy, you obviously don’t want just any random model, you want the best monocular for your purpose and your money. Given the wide range of brands and makes, it’s quite confusing when you start sorting through all the options. There’s a whole number of aspects that you need to consider.
The most obvious one is magnification. There is no best here, but going too low will make your monocular useless and going too high, you will experience too much shake and the image will be dim. Typically something around 8x is a good choice in terms of usability and usefulness.
The size of the lens in front will determine how bright the image is – which is important with any optical instrument.
The quality of the optics is the main factor that determines the price of the product. Don’t think that just because two monoculars have the same basic specs they will produce same quality images. A $200 model will almost always be immeasurably better than a $20 one. The latter is just a toy, while the former one is a serious tool for birders, hunters, hikers and other adventurers.
In this part of the website we strive to collect all the necessary information to help people find out about the best monoculars on the market and make a good buying decision that they won’t regret.
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