Celestron continues to develop its relationship with the Korean optics industry. They sent along three new models which have been added to their Mini Series. The 8X25 and the 10X25 (models 71542 and 71543) should be of definite interest to birders.
Both have decent fields of view (about 330 feet at 1000 yards for the 8Xs, and 275 feet for the 10Xs), good eyerelief (14mm and 11mm respectively), excellent close focus (9 feet), light weight (11 oz.), and a price that should come in under $100. They also feature multi-coating and high quality prisms for a clear, snappy, detailed view. Their optical performance equals that of many other compacts in this price range‹including those from Nikon, Bausch and Lomb, Minolta, Pentax, and Swift. As I have said before, this group of relatively inexpensive, high quality, inverted porroprism compacts represents a real value for the beginning birder, or any birder on a budget. They provide the kind of optical performance, the kind of real birder's view of the bird, that can't be had below the $200 price point in full sized binoculars‹in a package that is much more likely to be carried long enough, far enough, and often enough to establish a solid interest in birding and some basic field skills. Then too, as a second binoculars, for those times when birding won't be your primary activity but you might see some birds anyway, they are worth their weight in gold. Every birder should own one.
(In addition to all the arguments above, butterfliers would be hard pressed to find any binoculars that focus closer or more rapidly than the inverted porro compacts.)
The Celestrons have some particular features to recommend them. The main drawback of most compacts is that you have to place them precisely in front of your eyes to see through them. They are not as easy to look through as birdworthy fullsized binoculars. It may be just me, but the new Celestrons seem unusually forgiving for compacts. Perhaps their eyerelief and the somewhat larger actual diameter of the eyepieces does it, but I do not get the "squinting through compacts" feeling that is often a trade off for the size and weight advantages. Another potential problem with compacts is that the small, often short, bodies can be hard for full sized hands to hold comfortably. There is simply nowhere to place all your fingers, or enough of them for a secure grip while one or two of them are busy focusing. The Celestrons solve this problem by being just a little longer than average, having an exceptionally well designed and well balanced body shape, and a body covering that is just tacky enough to make your grip ultra secure. They fit the hands very well indeed, which makes for a very stable, steady view. As a bonus, the body shape and covering are, in my opinion at least, quite attractive‹with a functional look that is very pleasing to the eye.
All of that makes the new Celestrons an exceptional value for birders, and their relative ease of view should make them even more attractive to butterfliers. I still have trouble settling on a Best Buy in this group of excellent optics, mainly because I have no way of testing long-term durability, but the new Celestron Minis are certainly my current favorites. I could be very happy with the 8X model as my primary birding binoculars, and either would make an exceptional binoculars for secondary birding.
