My reference standard for this review is Zeiss Dailyt roof prism armored 10x40 B T*, fast focus at 0.7 turns, close focus about 22 feet, FOV about 340 feet. Decades old and still going strong. Barska Gladiator 12-36x70 Zoom I originally purchased from my local Big 5 and evaluated for a week before return.
Build: Body/frame appears to have plastic ends at housing where the prism is located. Center hinge for eye spacing has good solid retention and this area appears to be of metal. Tubes unknown material. Center shaft of focus knob is threaded for tripod adaptor under plastic cap. Zoom lever appears to be metal. Center focus knob plastic.
Case/Strap: Case does come with binocs but never removed from packaging, not evaluated.
Eye Cups: Not evaluated.
Diopter: Feel is fair with no click stops. Range of adjustment is limited, had to adjust to extreme end, not the norm for me.
Durability: Most likely fragile because of the long tubes and being porro design.
Focus: Probably about 1.3 turns stop to stop. Feel is fair with glue popping noise during use sometimes. Close focus perhaps about 30 feet.
Lens Caps: Fair.
View: Center focus fair, edge focus minus fair at 12x. Focus at 36x is minus fair yet it does work, image is not a blob. FOV is poor at about 150 feet at 12x and smaller at 36x, this is the most unpleasant element of these binocs, tunnel vision.
Conclusion: Some would say to avoid zoom binocs and generally I would agree. I would not say these are unusable yet I wouldn't consider them decent either. Perhaps novelty would be the best term for these binocs. Best to keep overall magnification lower and/or limit zoom range. Even on the high-end of binocs I don't believe any maker makes anything like this. Barska Gladiator 12-36x70 Zoom Binocular w/Tripod Adapter
I bought these binocs because of the price and realized I should have spent the extra money. The low to mid magnification is good to fair, but the full zoom is out of focus and creates double vision and a headache. Maybe I just got a defective pair, but I'm not gonna give them a second chance. I'm going to spend the extra money and get a pair of Oberwerks.
These are awesome! I bought them for an upcoming trip to the Grand Canyon and didn't want to spend a fortune. I tried them out when I got them and it was raining out, so I looked up at the trees and could see the drops of water falling off the pine needles of a pine about 40 feet from the house and about 70 feet tall. Lots of nice features and mounts very well to my video camera tripod.
when i took it out of the package, i tried to get better focus of my left eye, so i started to noticed that a sound coming from it was not good, as soon as i tell you this the optic part of the eye come off showing bad or poorly made interior so i did the same thing with the other optic in the right eye but the same thing happended in whitin 5 minutes i had a headheache and 65 usd plus taxes wasted on a product so bad that couldnot resist even to be set up for a quick an simple first time use, dont waste your money!
EDA
I received my binocular sooner that expected,.I was impressed with the packing and care to keep it safe from damage. The binocular is good quality materials and workmanship but the tripod adapter is very unstable,...more suited for a regular smaller binocular. The optics are fair, Not the best, BUT for the price a good deal.
It is a very heavy piece of equipment, so it needs a more solid mount, the larger ones with the rod mount is what this one needs,...So you better have arms that are very strong to use this binocular for a while ,....Im designing a different mount to steady it. I like this product, but as most things are these days, could be better, here again the price is comporable with the product.'
Detail Products
Detail Reviews
Click here for more information
