At 16x Magnification:When you increase their magnification to 16x their Exit Pupil reduces to 1.56 (25/16) which means that even less light will be getting to your eyes. At 12x Magnification:When you increase the magnification on these Eagleviews to 12x their Exit Pupil reduces to 2.08 (25/12) which means that less gets to your eyes. To minimize reflection on the lens surfaces and ensure clear, sharp images, anti-reflective coatings are often applied. These anti-reflection coatings are very important as part of the light that passes through any lens is reflected by the front (incident light) and rear (exiting light) surfaces. This reduces the amount of light passing through the lens and if this transmittance is very bad, the image you see will be darker than on binoculars that transmit more light. Also, the reflected light may cause ghosting and flaring, affecting image contrast.

The dioptre adjustment is unusual. Rather than a dial on the eyepiece, it’s in the centre where you focus. So you focus your left eye, then pop out the dial and adjust it slightly for your right. Nikon Sportstar Zoom 8-24x25 binoculars come in a portable and compact body, and employ a zoom lever on the top of the body which gives a smooth 8-24x zooming experience. The focusing ring can be operated while looking through the binoculars during observation. Slightly more manageable as an option for birders is the retro-looking Celestron Up Close G2 10-30x50 binocular, though it’s still heavy compared with what we have here due to that extra zoom power and larger objective lens. If weight is an issue, a zoom monocular is another alternative. Here Nikon’s arch-rival Canon provides one in its PowerShot Zoom Monocular, on which a minimum 100mm focus setting is adjustable to a 800mm equivalent. It can even capture stills and videos to microSD card too, though requires a battery to power it. All lenses and prisms are multilayer-coated for brighter images and the body is a lightweight 305 g/10.8 oz. Some cheap optics use coatings on the lenses to artificially tint the view, for example you find many cheap binoculars with ruby coated lenses which are used to filter red to compensate for their poor-quality optics that do not properly converge the color spectrum. Thankfully this is not the case with these and I thought that the colors that are produced by the EagleView look and feel natural, but with possibly a tiny bit less saturation than on my control binoculars.These are quite hard parameters to judge and very subjective, but I thought that the contrast of the image produced was good and once you have correctly focussed on an object the image is pin sharp. With these Nikon binoculars, the minimum distance that you can focus on an object is a 4 meters (13.1ft) away, which once again is not great and quite a bit further than the best. I consider anything under 6ft to be very good. So if you are looking for a compact binocular specifically for things like observing butterflies then I do not recommend getting these. Rather take a look at these close focusing binoculars.

An important thing to consider when looking at the size of a compact binocular is how small they are when they are folded. When you are are looking through them, just how small they are is not that important, but size is far more important when you carrying them around with you. Different designs of compacts fold up in different ways and this can make a big difference is their size. With their eye-cups fully retracted, they have a length of 11.9cm (4.7in), this increases to 12.4cm (4.9n) when you fully twist out the eyecups. Fully folded, the width of the binocular is 9.2cm (3.6in), fully opened it is 11cm (4.3in). Their height is 6.3cm (2.5in), which once again all on the larger end of the scale for a full compact binocular but nothing excessively so. To see this in action, you can hold these binoculars up at arm's length and look at the eyepiece lenses, where you can clearly see the circle of light in the eyepieces, this represents the exit pupil. As you increase the magnification you can actually see this circle of light in each eyepiece getting smaller and smaller - see my series of photos below that I took to demonstrate this: Strong Points: I think that on the whole their main feature, the 8-24x zoom works pretty well, which I have to be honest I was rather surprised about. Being able to zoom into something to view it in more detail is nice and the actual zoom adjustment dial is well positioned and it is really simple to adjust without having to remove the binoculars from your face, or even change your grip. In your hands the Nikon EagleViews feel good and I would say that they not only look good but also give off the impression that they are more expensive than they actually are. The image quality and brightness at 8x magnification is also pretty good for a pair of compacts. I doubt if this very thin rubber armouring would protect the optics very much from damage, but it does make a nice grippy surface to hold onto and is well placed for this.

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Specs-wise, it boasts superior optics and coatings and its Porro prisms are made with BaK-4 Barium Crown glass, considered the best prism material available. The exterior is rubberised and lens caps flip down. Accessories include a rugged carry bag with a strap and both regular and flared eyecups. We found the Celestron SkyMaster Pro especially good for observing the moon. You get a bright image and breathtaking detail. What’s more, the 3D image that binoculars offer (and telescopes don’t) is stunning when it comes to the moon’s craters. The lenses on these Nikon EagleView Zooms are multilayer-coated. What this means is that they have received multiple layers of anti-reflective coatings which helps to increase light transmission, for a brighter image and therefore better low light performance. This is good, but it would have been even better if they had been fully-multi coated, which would mean that they had multiple layers of anti-reflective coatings on all air to glass surfaces and not just some of them as these are.

This model is the ideal companion when spectating sports events, nature-watching or pursuing other outdoor activities. Another downside to them not being fully covered in rubber is that there is more chance of them making a louder sound if something like your watch or more commonly a ring on your finger strikes against them. Rubber armour dampens down the sound and helps to ensure that you don't frighten away easily spooked animals like birds or deer. Even with two hands, the 20x magnification makes for a wobbly image. There’s an integral tripod mount (on a rail, so you can adjust balance) which is much better. If you’re using them handheld at home, it’s worth leaning them against the doorframe for a steadier picture. These EagleView Zooms come with a fairly disappointing 13mm of eye-relief, which may be something to keep in mind if you want to use your optics whilst wearing glasses. Ideally and to be sure that you have enough distance to play with to enable you to see the full field of view without any vignetting when using your glasses most experts recommend that you should look for binoculars that have an eye relief of about 16mm or more. In most cases an eye relief of 14 to 15mm is adequate for most people who wear eyeglasses to be comfortable, so 13mm is a little on the short side. Most non-eyeglass wearers will just use the eyecups in the fully extended position.You must remember that as well as the Exit Pupil, the performance of a pair of optics in poor light also depends a lot on the quality of the glass and optical coatings and not just the exit pupil and twilight factor formula. Good coatings on the lenses and the prisms can double the amount of light that gets through the binocular, when compared to those that have none or poor quality coatings.

When set to a magnification level of 8x, their field of view is 80m at 100m / 240ft at 1000 yards (4.6°) - which, for a what at this setting effectively an 8x25 binocular is not very good. To put this into context, the Steiner 8.5x26 Wildlife Pro has a FOV of 333ft at 1000 yards and the Kowa 8x25 BD has a FOV of 331ft at 1000 yards and even the Minox 10x25 BV BRW which has a magnification of 10x has a FOV of 290ft at 1000 yards. They’re lovely to use with a bright image that’s well magnified. They’re great outdoorsy all-rounders. A close focus range of just 1.9m means you can magnify even quite near objects.Optics-wise they use premium glass (Schott HT) for the roof prisms with phase-correcting coating P40 and HighLux-System HLS. This makes for a pin-sharp image without the loss of contrast that cheaper roof prisms can suffer from. Lenses have reliable HDC Plus-multicoating and AquaDura lens coating for maximum protection, while anti-reflective coatings make for great low-light capabilities. All lenses and prisms are multilayer-coated for brighter views and the body is a light-weight of only 305g. At 8x Magnification: All binoculars with an 8x magnification and 25mm objective lenses have an Exit Pupil of 3.13 (25/8) and a Twilight Factor of 14.1, which if you compare them to a full size 8x42 binocular, which has an exit pupil of 5.25 and a twilight factor of 18.3, it shows that the increased objective lens diameter of the 8x42 binoculars will gather more light and make it possible for the binoculars to transmit more light to your eyes. This is the main compromise to using a compact over a larger pair of optics, but having said that in reasonably good lighting conditions like during the day, where your eye pupil size is only about 2 to 3mm, this will not be much of a factor, it is just at twilight and under poor light where you can really notice the difference. You must also remember that having a good pair of compacts even in poor light is still much better than having no binoculars at all! Despite the glossy plastic exterior to the Nikon Sportstar Zoom 8-24x25 binocular, there’s enough weight and heft that we found it easy enough to hold them steady when observing. Inevitiably though, the further we went up the magnification range amplified any exterior hand wobble, with resultant image judder. As with other small binoculars, they come with a strap and a case (but the case doesn’t have its own strap). The case is simple but functional. The eyepiece cap is attached to the strap so you can’t lose it. While the objective lens caps flip down so you can’t lose them either.