Nikon Action 12x50 EX Extreme ATB Binocular Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)This binocular simply fell into my hand as though it were made for me personally. Love at first feel? Yes!
I compared this binocular to several others in the same price range, here is what I found:
Fit and finish: Nikon is easily the equal of any Vixen or Pentax or Olympus (I didn't try Canon).
Feel: Nikon was by far the best.
Optics: Nikon did something clever here. First of all, they gave this one a wider field of view than, for example, the Pentax PCF. Looking through the Pentax (and, by the way, I have a high regard for Pentax and *love* their Papilio series, but that is another binocular for a different purpose) after using the Nikon, the view seemed dimmer and claustrophobic. With the Nikon, you have that wonderful feeling of actually being "out there" in the field or in the sky with your object. And everything is so bright and sharp! The Nikon really excels in sharpness at the center.
However, Nikon did another clever thing (and I checked a couple of pairs of these Nikon binos to see if this was true generally, and it was): at this price point you can't possibly have the whole field of view perfectly sharp. No binocular is perfectly sharp at the edges. Here is what Nikon did, best as I can tell: they put the sloppiest edges at the outside and top of the field of view. Wow! Think about it: if you had to compromise somewhere, you want to compromise AWAY from the center and bottom. Why? Because, the inside edge of the FOV of each barrel is where the object will be. And, most likely (especially for terrestrial viewing), the object or its environment will also be resting on or near the bottom (think of a bird in a tree or an animal on the ground) So, Nikon seems to have made sure that the bottoms and inside edge of the FOV was as sharp as possible, while allowing the far outside and top edges to be a little worse. Smart!
There is some chromatic abberation, but that, too, is unavoidable at this price. Even some very high priced camera lenses (with only one barrel to worry about) have this. The CA is not at all objectionable. A little rim of faint purple at the edges of the FOV in high contrast situations.
A very nice binocular. Not too heavy, not too big, very comfortable to use, excellent imagery, top-of-the-line sharpness-at-center, great construction. I expect to get a lifetime's enjoyment out of them.

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