Customer Reviews

Minox 8x25 Macroscope

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

 

 

I've no problems with function and handling of the Macroscope, and the optics are what you'd expect from a quality roof prism unit...except for one thing. Somewhere in the optics path is a serious off-axis reflection source, a ghost image, so unless you have your eye precisely dead center, there's a nasty off axis ghosting. When you have your eye right on the center, the image is fine. Just a bit off axis, and the stray light ruins everything. So, you have to practice using it. When you get your eye on axis, this is a fine optical device.

I'm addicted to close focus monoculars. The switch from watching deer to birds to bees in flowers to ants and critters in pond algae is irreplaceable. The Brunton Macroscope's the best, but bulky. Some day, perhaps, some manufacturer is going to create a close-focus, image stabilized ,camera mountable monocular and make me very happy.

The Minox 8X25 is a great tool with very decent light capturing ability allowing good use in early morning and late evening. It is lightweight enough for me to carry frequently on mountain excursions. I found it easy to focus and I like its resistance to weather. The small stuffsack that comes with it is a little fumbly and really doesn't readily protect the entire unit quite as well as it could. If I could make one improvement, it would be to have removeable lense protectors. All in all, this is an excellent tool for me and is worth the extra expense compared to cheaper models. One thing to remember, .. a monocular is neither a set of binoculars nor a spotting scope and is more of a special use tool - lightweight compromise for telescopic viewing.

I like to keep a small monocular in my truck for the times I do not have binoculars with me. I have tried several small and MUCH less expensive models over time and was never very pleased with them. I knew I was buying on the low end, and therefore getting low end performance.

I recently decided to go ahead and spend the money and get a good one. Knowing Minox cameras and other optics I figured that even though this was more than I wanted to spend even for a good one, at least I could put my quest to an end.

Not even close.

Nicely packaged and light enough, but slow and difficult to focus and sharpness / contrast was none to only MODERATELY better than the $40 Bushnell model I am currently using.

If I did not know the prices or the manufacturers and was given these and my Bushnell to test, and was then told that these were ... let's say... $10 more than the Bushnell... I would buy the Bushnell.

This is NOT an endorsement for my cheap Bushnell, as they are not great. It is just that these are only marginally better clarity, brightness, and NO better contrast, for about 4 times the price.

As for the macro capability, yes it does focus closer than the others I have used, but still with less than stellar clarity in any light. In anything other than bright direct sunlight it was difficult to use.

Being from Minox, I was VERY surprised.

Thanks to Amazon's return policy I was able to return them very easily.

I received it a few days ago and must say: I meets the description quite well. The image is (if focused correctly off course) very sharp from center to the edge, clear, bright and sports a surprisigly large field of view compared to other monoscopes I've tested so far.
There is off course the issue whith the very shallow depth of field at macro distance. But this is due to physics. To increase the depth of field you would have to close an iris inside the scope and that would make the image darker. (No, the scope does not have one)
Read the description carefully (maybe also on the minox home page) to see if this is what you want.

Earlier this year on a trip to the UK with my six year old son, we found that his binoculars had been broken in transit. A pair of small binoculars seemed the obvious choice to replace them, and we examined several pairs, but he was taken by the Minox 8x25 Macroscope. Small and compact, it fit perfectly into his hand and clipped onto his belt when not in use. Furthermore, the optics looked superior to the binoculars we had tried, so we decided on it.

I was glad we did! He took his new Macroscope everywhere, using it to watch lizards, butterflies and dragonflies as well as seals and birds. This was a family holiday, and after a while I found that I was leaving behind my Leicas in the knowledge that I could always pinch the Minox if we ran into something unusual, so I ended up using it to check through gull flocks, confirm the identity of buzzards, examine butterflies and even do a bit of private seawatching while everyone else was in the Minack Theatre. Together, we enjoyed excellent views of a Peregrine harassing Rock Doves as we scrambled down a rock face where binoculars would have been out of the question. My conclusion is that the Minox Macroscope is both a good primary optic for kids as well as a handy tool to take on a walk when binoculars are just that little bit too bulky. I was very impressed by the optical quality, which was far superior to the similar sized, similar priced 8 x 25 binoculars we had tried. I wear spectacles and had no problem with the eye relief on the Macroscope - something that can be a problem with the smaller binoculars. The focussing wheel is well designed too - it takes just a short turn to focus, something that lends itself to use by children. I lead bird tours and on the basis of the optics of the Macroscope, I would be keen to try some Minox binoculars for myself.

Highly recommended for wildlife watching and casual birding!

Chris Sharpe, 9 November 2009

I thought this would be easier to handle than binoculars when I have a camera in the other hand. I was wrong about that. A monocular needs two hands to focus, and it is much harder to get on target and even harder to pan, as it doesn't lock into your eye sockets like a binocular. I also thought it would give me a hand-lens view of an insect but from 15 inches away, and it doesn't. The insect is magnified, though not 8 times, but it looks far away, so you don't see much detail.
This monocular has several design weaknesses. The eye-cup is only 3/4 inch in diameter, so instead of sitting on the bones around the eye, it pokes you in the eyeball, so you have to try to hold it at the right distance from the eye, and so much light enters the eyepiece and reflects off the lens that the image is severely degraded. The eyepiece lens is very small and the eye has to be precisely in the center of the lens to see the whole field of view. The focus ring needs less than one turn lock-to-lock, but at 2 inches diameter that takes a lot of finger movement. The killer is that just a barely detectable movement takes you from crisp to fuzzy, then just a litle more and you are so far off focus that there is nothing identifiable in the entire field of view, and it's like that for almost the whole focussing range. So at first look, turning the wheel a quarter turn each way won't tell you which way to go, and if you turn the focus too fast you zip past the correct setting without even noticing it. With careful setup and the right light, the optics seemed to have excellent resolution and contrast, but in the field I found this much too difficult to use.

from what i can tell so far this is the "real deal" in terms of being a decent optical instrument that should cost in this range - close to $200 or so, as vs being a toy. The image is bright, uniform and clear. The weight is about what i expected, less than half that of a binocular this size, and it easily fits into a coat pocket. The reviewer remarking on the case/bag has a good point - it could be better. I haven't tested waterproofness but see no reason to doubt it. There is a fair amount of "backlash" in the focusing. I don't know if that's normal but I assume it is. It's a little annoying, but not terribly so, because even at several hundred feet a small turn of the focus ring makes a big difference - depth of field effect - so you are going "back and forth." I'm really happy with it and I expect it to last essentially forever, like my Nikon 8x23 and 10x50 binocs. Close focus is a big plus. Agree with the many positive reviews, but I admittedly cannot fully refute the negative ones since i'm not an optics expert - not in terms of feeling the product is defective (I don't), but in terms of being able to get similar quality at a lower price. So if you are pinching pennies, you are on your own. Fooling around comparing it with cheaper scopes wasn't worth my time.

Expensive and German. I would have expected a sharp, clear, bright image. That is not what I got. I sent it back and was pleased with Amazon in that regard. Save your money and buy a 40 dollar scope that will give about the same performance.