Telescope Reviews: Celestron Regal LX 8x42 and 10x42 Roof Minireview

New binoculars in the house (so what else is new). Astronomics, our site sponsor, bought out the remaining stock of Celestron Regals and is selling them all (currently) at $169.95. So I bought these to include in my comparison of small binoculars. Thought I'd pass along what I know so far.

This Minireview includes Celestron Regal roofs in 10x42 and 8x42 comparison to Nikon Monarch 10x42 roof, Pentax HR II 10x42 roof, Bushnell Legend 8x42 roof, Oberwerk 8x42 roof and Garrett Optical Apo 8x42 roof.

The Celeston Regal LX 8x42 and LX 10x42 roof are exactly the same size. They are identical in size to the Nikon Monarch 10x42 roof. Body shape doesn't look like the Regal "LS" I've seen in photos. From what I read, I believe the LX is considered the "next generation" beyond the LS. The Bushnell Legend 8x42 is just a bit bigger than the Regal. The Pentax HR II 10x42 is quite a bit longer. Oberwerk's roof is larger than all others except the largest of these, the Pentax. The Garrett Apo 8x42 roof, the most compact of all the roofs I've used, is quite a bit smaller.

The Regal LX box says made in Japan and Japan is printed on the focus dial. There are no stickers found on the binocular anywhere that say made in China. Nikon Monarch also has Japan printed on the focus dial, but underneath is a sticker that says made in China and it says made in China on the box. All these other roofs are made in China.

The Regal LX is light, 25 ounces, but the smaller Garrett 8x42 roof is lighter at 23 oz. and the Nikon Monarch, same size as the Regal, is the lightest at 22 oz. The Pentax HR II 10x42 weighs in at 29 oz. The Bshnell Legend also weighs 25 oz. The Oberwerk roof is 24 oz. The Regal at 25oz. is right in the middle and is really quite light.

Eye relief is pretty long, not yet measured, but last night I was able to see the entire fov in the 8x42 while wearing my glasses and with the eyeguard locked out one position, also the same with the 10x42. On the 8x42 when the eyeguard was fully retracted, even with my eyeglasses I got minor blackout. For my eyeglasses, best position for most comfortable view with the 8x42 was with eyeguard one click out, with the 10x42 most comfortable with my glasses was with the eyeguard all the way in.

Depth to the eyelens with the eyeguards down is 5mm, so expect that to shorten usable eye relief to less than listed. Keep in mind, we eyeglass wearers WANT some depth to the eyelens. With the curvature of my eyeglass lenses, at least 3mm is need to keep eyeglass lenses from hitting and scratching binocular eye lens, or just as bad, scratching my eyeglass lenses (it would cost me more to replace my eyeglass lenses than it would to replace this binocular). The Celestron Regal LX has 4mm. The Pentax HR II, the Nikon Monarch and the Oberwerk all have 5mm clearance when the eyecup is down. The Bushnell Legend has 4mm. Also, all of these have the rubber eyeguard raised just enough above the metal eyepiece edge rim to prevent the metal from touching my eyeglasses. The Garrett Apo has only 2mm of depth to the lens, requiring that the eyecup be twisted out somewhat so my eyeglasses don't hit the binocular eye lens. However, the eyecup just won't stay put at any intermediate positions. To keep it from moving during use, it must be either all the way in or all the way out. So, while the Garrett roof has the most eye relief, and the most usable eyerelief with the cups down, it is the least accomodating to the eyeglasses wearer. The Regal LX gets good marks for use of eye relief, accomodation and protection. All of these have long enough eye relief for use with eyeglaasses.

The Regal has a push/pull eyeguard with one positive click midway. It did not move from the midway or full out click positions. The eyeguard on the Nikon Monarch is twist out and can be set to any number of positions with no movement and is much smoother than the Regal. The Pentax and Garrett both twist and lock only when full out. The GO slips at any position in between. The Oberwerk eyeguard twists is smooth with no detents and stays put. The Bushnell twists to three positive detent settings. The Nikon Monarch, the Oberwerk and the Busnell Legend offer the most positive positioning and adjustment for the user.

The Regal right eyeguard is also the right diopter dial, so nothing is in the way to grasp it. The diopter has click stop, but the clicks are quite coarse. Not only was best focus for me between two clicks on the 8x42, but the dial on the 8x42 was quite tight and coarse. The 10x42 is much quieter and has a smoother fluid-like motion. I don't recall noticing the same 'can't find the right spot' problem with the 10x42. The right dipoter on some of these others is very tight, and some are thin rings or low profile, and being under the eyecup are very difficult to grasp. The Regal dipoter is easy to grasp and turn. Both the Pentax and the Garrett have a click stop diopter and both move much smoother and finer than the Regal. The Bushnell is smooth and with raised tactile rubber is the easiest to use overall.

I like the Regal LX eyelens cover. I don't like the objective push-in caps. The Nikon, Pentax, Oberwerk and Busnell all have captive objective caps, something I think should be expected in a binocular designed typical for terrestrial use. The Pentax eyelens cover is so loose it falls off.

I measured the aperture by scale view in exit pupil using a loupe and I could see a full 41-42mm , so there are no baffles in the way, and the prism opening appears large enough for the full 42mm aperture. All of these roofs here measured 41-42mm by several methods of measurement, except the Oberwerk which has a deep baffel that reduces aperture to 34mm. About 1/3rd of all the twenty other 8x and 10x porros that I measured have mis-sized baffels that result in significantly less (12% to 20% less) than full aperture.

IPD range of the Regal LX measures 58-74mm, same as the Pentax and the Bushnell. The Monarch covers the range from 55 to 74mm. The Garrett adjusts from 57-71mm.

These are waterproof/fogproof, O-ring sealed, nitrogen purged. But, if I'm not mistaken, so are the Pentax HR II, the Nikon Monarch, the Bushnell Legend and the Garrett Apo. The Oberwerk is listed as waterproof, but unlike all these others which have internal focusing the Oberwerk has an eyepiece bridge and external focusing.

Close focus is 7 ft in the 8x42 and 6 ft in the 10x42. But view between right and left barrel is mis-lapped by 1/3rd of the view at this range, in other words only the central 2/3rds of the view is binocular vision. In my opinion these are un-usable at this close distance. The Bushnell Legend measures the same for close focus and mislapped barrel. Actually the Nikon Monarch at 7ft and the Pentax HR II at 12 ft also show the same amount of mislapped image. The Garrett focuses to within 5ft, maybe slightly less, and at this range the mislap in the images is greater than 50% of the image. What you really get with these binoculars when it comes to close focus (assuming at 10ft) is a "binocular vision" field of view about 8 inches wide. In these same binoculars, when vieweing at 100 feet the barrel overlap is off by less than 5% of the fov and you get a 10 foot wide view with binocular vision while only 6-8 inches is not overlapped.

In the Regal, interior baffles and blackening are pretty good. There are two metal baffle rings and the inside wall is cut with ridges and blackened. There is some grey metal near the prism housing, but it is pretty dull grey. The Pentax has the finest, darkest, dullest black/grey interior baffles. The Nikon Monarh is similar to the Regal. The Garret Apo roof and the Bushnell Legend have the most bright grey metal in near the prisms. None of the above are really poor in this respect. The Oberwerk is essentially molded plastic with no effective baffles at all, although it does have one improperly sized that is drastically reducing the aperture.

Coatings look very nice on the Regal. But, the best coatings do their job not by looking nice but by reflecting the least amount of light and allowing the most light to pass. The Regal most definitely reflects the least amount of light of all these. The Nikon Monarch and Bushnell Legend appear equal and reflect reflect only slightly more. The Oberwerk objective coatings are similar to the Nikon and Bushnell, but it appears the Oberwerk prisms are uncoated. The Pentax HR II coatings reflect more light than all of those four. The Garrett Apo reflects the most light off the objective lens. The difference here from best to worst is that it was very difficult for me to see my reflection in the Regal or the Monarch and no detaail at all could be seen, but in the Pentax it was easy to see detail in my reflection. In the Garrett, I could easily see facial features in detail and the color of my shirt. In tests done so far, the Garrett records the lowest LM, seemingly in agreement with the highest reflectivity in the coatings. All of them are listed as FMC and phase coated. I doubt the Oberwerk is FMC.

The Regal pouch has a snap clip and has an over the shoulder strap, but the thin material seems cheap. The Bushnell Legend IMO has the nicest pouch, zips fully closed and has an over the shoulder strap. The Pentax, Nikon and Garrett pouches are cordura nylon with velcro closures. If you like to wear your pouch on a belt loop then the Nikon Monarch pouch looks like the best. The Monarch is sturdy, has no pouch strap to dangle, and the belt strap holds securely, doesn't sag. The Garrett pouch also has a belt loop, but you need to do something with the pouch shoulder strap and when you fold it up and stick it inside the pouch to get it out of the way, there is not enough room for the binocular.

The binocular bracket hole cover cap is easy to get off (more than I can say for some of the other roofs), and there is plenty of room to fit an L bracket between the barrels of the Regal (also more than I can say for some of the other roofs). Keep in mind, you don't get a lot of room for an L bracket between the barrels of a roof prism binocular. At my IPD of 62mm, there's 14mm between the barrels for an L bracket. All the others have less room. The bracket that came with my Oberwerk Ultra 15x70 is only 10mm wide and works perfectly. No other standard L bracket I own would work. I do have a velcro strap style adapter from Eagle Optics that works well with all of them.

I checked collimation in the 10x42 and found it was adjusted to within about 1 arcminute, off slightly at an angle, mostly vertical. This is well within acceptable standards and is about the same as I saw last night in my 10x42 Nikon SE. Images merged easily. Checked again, this time both side by side, and the 8x42 has slightly more error in collimation than the 10x42. Still not much error, but it could be 2 arcmin in the 8x42, that's approaching allowable error. I'll need to get a view of a measuring double to check total error.

A few objects late just for first views included Mars, M42 and M45. Capella was bright white. I caught a view of M37 and orangish Mars in the same fov.

I compared views early this moring on just a few objects. I had the 10x42 mounted and used the 8x42 handheld, sometimes braced. Saturn could be seen oblong. Arcturus was quite red. I compared views to the Nikon 10x42 SE. In all three I saw M66 and M51. It was just a bit easier in the 10x42s. I found M51 in the 8x42 Regal hand-held unbraced, looking almost overhead.

Tonight I mounted the 8x42 and checked FOV, it's 6.3°. Rechecked the 10x42 FOV and got a better measure, it is 6.0°. Of the three 10x42 roofs, the Nikon Monarch is widest at 6.2°, the Pentax HR II and the Celestron Regal LX are both 6.0°. Of the three 8x42 roofs, the Celestron Regal is 6.3°, the Bushnell Legend is 6.5° and the Garrett Apo is 6.7°. The Oberwerk 8x42 is only 5.8°.

So far, I like the Regal LX. We'll see how they measure up after a few weeks of use. I need to check magnification, test LM, resolution, field sharpness, look at the exit pupil and compare how they measure up for contrast. But I can say this, based on what I see so far, with the exception of the very inexpensive Oberwerk here, I think I'm comparing this binocular with a good price group. All these other roofs range between $200 to $300, and I see some features on some of these others that I find I like better or simply function better than the Regal.

I really don't see anything so far that leads me to believe these Regals are worth much more than these others For the Regal LX, $169 is a great bargain, but $440 may be overpriced. If most of these remaining measures come out on top of this group, my opinion on this could change. (EDIT - Having checked the coatings for a second time and finding they appear to be the best, and further down in this post you will see also this Regal appears the have the least outer fov aberrations, maybe this first opinion was a bit hasty.)

The Celestron Regal has a lifetime no-fault warranty. If it breaks or becomes unusable, no matter whose fault, Celestron will repair or replace the binocular for just a $25 shipping and handling charge.

edz

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