Aldi night vision monocular (1 Viewer)

[TJW]

On sale as of Thur 2 Oct Aldi night vision monocular £89.99.
Useful for mammal/owl watching?

 

[smurf.for.mark]

i bought one similar a few years ago made by a russian company ("biagash" or something sounding like that), same spec "gen 1" with built in infra red alluminator for about £180 and found it all but useless. you really needed a full moon at night to see any distance ie over 25 yards as thats the limit of the built in infra red alluminator dawn and dusk gave best performance when looking into shadows ... but saying that my old 7x50 bins were better at picking out detail in dark shadow in the same conditions and didnt need batteries! all in all ide rather use 7x50's for night time and sold the night scope dismissing it as a pointless novelty gadget, even my kid brother was underwhelmed with it.
if you intend only to fix it to a camera and only use it at close range ie under 20 yards you may find it usefull if the high pitched whine emmitting from the unit doesnt spook everything in a 100 yard radius. it really needs an extra infra red light source.
there a far distant cry though from the expensive gen 3 stuff the millitary use now

regards mark

 

[dafi]

I bought a Bresser night sight from Liddles a while back with the intention of taking it out otter watching. It proved no use for any distance at all. If you are staking out your local badgers set or looking down the garden for hedgehogs then short distances thirty yards and less are not bad. Mine came with a wee IR spot light that worked fine down the garden.
The one place it totally excels is when you look up!! Although it has a very narrow field of view its compensated for by the low magnification. Once the image intensifier starts on the stars the amount you can see in the heavens is staggering.
Just don’t take the lens cap off in day light even when is switched off!!
Its more of a fun item than serious optical equipment…..mind you how much dose decent night vision equipment cost?

 

[smurf.for.mark]

about £3000-£4000 last time i checked. i wouldnt say they excel on the night sky as its a bit grainy and the magnification is a bit low.... but...never tried it attached to a telescope, i wonder what that would be like? if it could be done that is???

 

[Carless]

These are back again now. http://www.aldi.co.uk/uk/html/offers/2827_11361.htm

Though, after reading this thread, I'm certainly not buying one.

 

[spitfiretriple]

Agreed. We shouldn't be too blase though. I had my first exposure to military night vision equipment thirty years ago, and it was pretty rubbish. Probably cost millions at the time. Daresay for £99 this will be okay for "keeping an eye on your fishing line"

Good heads up post nevertheless. I've had some reasonably good (and very cheap) kit from Aldi (or was it Lidl? Maybe both). We don't shop there though and I can't be bothered to visit their websites every week, so it's good when someone (that'll be you TJW and you Carless) draws our attention.

 

[Fozzybear]

The Gen 1 intensifiers in these would be used as a triplet in military use (one in front of another with another in front of that) to get enough amplification to be usable, but even then they were not that brilliant and big and heavy too! The Gen 2 intensifiers were much better and and smaller and could be used singly, the Gen 3 was even better.

...I used to work for a company that manufactured image intensifiers.