Customer Reviews

Emerson 7x50 Binoculars

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

I bought these at Kohl's for $7.99 on sale. I expected at best okay viewing quality, nothing great.
I should have known that ANYTHING with the Emerson name slapped on it was going to be junk.
Horrible, non adjustable double vision. Don't waste your money.

I wasn't expecting much, just wanted some feature'less binoculars I didn't have to worry about damaging or getting stolen. Yet, now I really don't have to worry about that because I wouldn't bother taking these any place.

Do not buy these, unless you're looking to experience what it is like to have advanced staged macular degeneration.

I got the my pair as a gift. It's just impossible to focus. I could see better details with my bare eyes from 100 yards than this. The double vision is impossible to get rid of no matter how hard I try to turn the two knobs as instruction says. Also a small cover for the center knob screw fell off when the package was opened the first time. And the cover can't stay on! This is a simple cosmetic problem but shows the poor quality of manufacturing!

I spotted these (in a Bed, Bath, and Beyond, of all places) just before an off-road trip and figured they might come in handy, so I tossed them in the shopping cart without unpackaging & trying them in the store. For the price, I wasn't expecting much in the way of optics. Unfortunately there was no way to overcome the double-imaging problem; if I closed one eye, *then* I would get a single image with the poor-quality optics I expected. :-) So these aren't really binoculars, they're just junk. I considered them useless and just tossed 'em. I didn't even get what I paid for.

Is it possible that they're not all this bad? Try (in the store) before you buy.

I bought these binoculars when I was at the checkout. They were there and I needed a new pair. OH MY GOSH, they are horrible. You can't see thru them and the are cheaply made. I have a Jason that I bought years ago and they are still good. I guess you get what you pay for.

...about a cheap binocular. Yes, they are cheap. But if you buy them thinking you're getting Swarovski quality, well, you didn't.

I used to sell really high end binocs, (think Swarovski, Steiner, etc) so I know all the gripes are valid. But I recently purchased a couple of sets of these from Rite-Aid on sale. I took them out of the box in the store and tested them, closing one eye to focus on something in the distance with the regular focus ring, then closing one eye and focusing using the diopter adjustment.

They worked just fine. No they were not Swarovski quality, but I wasn't expecting that. We really are hard on products these days. By my estimation, following the retail trail backwards these may have cost about a buck and a half to produce (yes, I may be exaggerating) so that they worked at all stuns me.

I bought them for kids to use. Kids will lose them, they will break them and I won't really care.

Reading all these negative reviews makes me think: a) no one who bought these in a store bothered to check the collimation before purchasing or b) were bitter that someone didn't spring for the Steiners --I'm kidding.

Eh, they're cheap, they're disposable--heck, they're almost AMERICAN! Again, just kidding.

These stink and are not useable. Even if you are thinking, "Well for $10, I could use these" you won't. The suck so bad. Cheap binoculars should be able to at least work poorly as binoculars. These work as two poorly aligned independant telescopes that will give you vertigo just trying to make one image out to the two crappy images your brain is trying make into one. Someone took the crappiest optics available, slapped them into a decent looking case, and sent them out the door. There is a minimum standard, and these don't even come close.

Where to start?
I don't expect much out of cheap binocualrs, but I expect some basics. If you buy a cheap new car you expect it to get you from point a to point b. Not much style, not much speed. But you get there. These don't get you off the lot.
(---) Alignment.
This is fundamental with binoculars. The images from the left and right optics have to line up when you look through them. Your eyes can handle a little skew but these have so much up/down and left/right that you will go crosseyed trying to use them. When you put binoculars to your eyes in the store or oustide, they should be effortless to use. You should never see to images and you should not barf as your brain tries to put the swimming images on your retinas into one coherent picture. Bad alignment makes it nearly impossible and always uncomfortable to get the Emerson's images to line up. These just suck. You should stop right here.

(--) Image quality.
Pretty bad. I don't expect much out of cheapos. But... Yeah they make things bigger and look closer, but they add so much fuzz that they don't work well. I took them to the range to use a a back up scope and we could not see the hits on the 50yd target in bright daylight. 100yd was a write off. Poorly color corrected in the field and not great even on axis. With optical production capabilities today, and optical design code, there is no excuse for something like this to be so crappy.

(--)Coatings.
All optics are coated today. In the '50s and '60s this was a big deal. By the '70s, everyone could coat. 40 years later and people still advertise it. "2011 Kia, now with windshield wipers" Same deal. You expect the coatings to be clean. Coatings reduce the glare from reflections of the optical surfaces and improve the brightness of the images. Emerson's coatings actually increase the glare and reduce the contrast because they are so poorly done with 10's of holes, defects and thousands of dust specs permanently buried under the coatings. They didn't even make an effort. The coating actually makes them worse, but they don't care because they sell them as coated optics with a funky orange glow, not low glare or high brightness which is what the coatings are supposed to do. If you like to look at everything through a haze of chinese dust and lung particles, you will love these.

(-) Mechanicals
Expect slop in cheapos. Adjustments are very sloppy. But you should be able to get to focus. Very dificult to get focus. Maybe these are tolerable.

(-) Exit Pupil
For cheap or compact binoculars you expect a small exit pupil (size of the light bundle where your pupil would be). This has a small one. A big one is better - makes it easier to use and give a brighter image. Hold the binos at arm's length and look at the bright spots at the eyepieces. If you compare two of the same design 7X50 or 10X40, you will see what I mean. Compact binos will have smaller exit pupils as a compromise for size. These should have about a 7mm exit pupil, but they have about 3. In standard binoculars, you expect at least 5. These use some compact parts in the big frame. So you get the worst part of the compact limited field and exit pupil with the bulk of standard and none of the benefit.

(-) Field
Decent standard 7X50 binocs will wave a field from 350 to 450 these claim 297. This is more in line with compact and tells you that the inner optics (prisms and occulars) are undersized to save money. Well we expected that, but the performance over the field is pretty terrible. White edges make rainbows all over the field and the only people that would be happy with the images are glaucoma patients.

(+) Finish
They have a nice look and feel.

(---) Summary:
This is how people buy prodcuts today. "They look good. The have bi-occulars. They are coated with a funky hi-tech orange coating. There are some numbers that I am not going to think about because Jersey Shore is on. They have a name that I think meant "good radios or toasters" back in the day. How can I go wrong for $10?" We actualy cannot build stuff this crappy in the US. But we expect US quality at Chinese prices. We are now sending them $ and getting nothing in return. This product is so bad it is insulting.

Emerson (which is not a company that actually makes something - they are company that sells their name to people whose products have no saleable attribute on thier own - Like the Britney Spears or Paris Hilton brand) has actually done the optical equivalent of f@#%ing up a one car funeral. 10$ binocs that are not worth $10.
To some these up in one word. They are... Craptastic!

I got these binoculars (if you could even call them that) at Rite Aid when I was Christmas shopping last December. I was mostly curious about what I could get for $7.50. What I get is a headache every time I try to use these! No matter how many times I try to adjust them, I get a blurry edged double image. I try to look at the moon and I see rainbows around the edges. They might make a great stage prop for community theater productions but that's about it. Even a small child would probably get angry trying to play with them. Save yourself a headache and get something decent!

I've got all of you beat! Our son got these as a gift, but only one ocular works; the other eye sees only black! Even free it's not worth it.

You can get eight of them for this price at Kohl's clearance (also on their website) as of this writing. Even then, it's a waste of money.