Expensive versus affordable binoculars—what’s the difference?

When I first took up birding, during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, I couldn’t believe I had only just discovered, in middle age, the joys of avian observation. It was the perfect hobby. I could watch birds anywhere. And I could do it virtually for free. I already had the one piece of equipment I needed to get started: a pair of good entry-level binoculars capable of magnifying small or distant birds so that I could better see their identifying characteristics and appreciate their beauty.

I was perfectly happy using those binoculars in the beginning. Before long I had racked up my first 100 species (“lifers” in the parlance of bird nerds) with them. Life was good. But then one day, out of curiosity, I tried out a pair of much more expensive bins from the locked display case at the local sporting goods store. Through them the world looked so much brighter, sharper, better. I could see the individual hairs of the taxidermy moose on the other side of the store. I didn’t buy those binoculars that day, but I knew that as soon as I could invest in primo optics like that, I would.

Eventually I took the plunge and purchased a pair of—gulp—$3,200 Swarovski Optik NL Pures, which many people consider to be the best binoculars on the market for bird-watching. My original bins, a Celestron NatureDX pair that cost less than $200, still get plenty of use, living as they do on the sill of the kitchen window, within easy reach whenever an interesting bird visits the backyard feeder while I’m doing the dishes. But it’s the new ones I take with me in the field on dedicated birding jaunts.

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I love these binoculars. They’re a pleasure to look at and use, and, most important, I feel like they help me see a lot more. I’ll admit, however, that I’ve wondered whether the price is justified. What, exactly, distinguishes binoculars that cost thousands of dollars from ones that sell for an order of magnitude less? I decided to find out.

A few decades ago this question was relatively easy to answer because binoculars were simpler, according to Steve Sosensky, content manager for Optics4Birding, a purveyor of birding optics. “There have been so many upgrades in the past 30 years,” he says.

Fundamentally, binoculars are two small telescopes mounted side by side to allow the viewer to make long-distance observations with both eyes instead of just one. Each “telescope” contains large objective lenses at the front end of the barrel to gather light, faceted elements called prisms in the middle that refract light to correct the upside-down, reversed image produced by the objective lenses, and an eyepiece at the back end consisting of smaller lenses that magnify the image.

There are two general types of binoculars, based on two different configurations of the prism system. Porro prism binoculars, named after their mid-19th-century Italian inventor, Ignazio Porro, have offset prisms that take up a lot of space, making for bulkier bins. Roof prism binoculars, in contrast, have prisms that are arranged such that they create a straight line between the eyepiece and the light-gathering objective lens, giving this style of binocular a slimmer form. Porro prism binoculars are inherently better at transmitting light, producing an image that is bright and true, and they are easier to manufacture. Roof prism binoculars, developed at the turn of the 20th century, are more durable and easier to weatherproof, but they lose some light as it passes through the prisms.

Manufacturers came up with a host of new features to make their binoculars brighter, more accurate, tougher than ever before: prisms made of glass containing barium oxide to bend the light without scattering it; “phase correction” coatings for the prisms to improve light transmission; lenses made of glass containing the mineral fluorite to reduce color distortion; external lens coatings to resist scratching and repel water, oil and dust; nitrogen or argon gas pumped into the body of the binoculars to replace the moisture-laden air and thus prevent internal fogging; chassis made of magnesium for durability.

Albert Fiedler of Swarovski Optik, who has worked as an optical designer for 25 years, notes that one of the biggest advances he has observed in that time is the development of a “field flattener” system that makes the image sharp all the way to the edges. “Such systems are well known in astronomy but only at very high magnifications. We realized such systems with magnifications of 8×, 10×, 12×,” he says, referring to the magnifications typically found in binoculars for wildlife viewing. In another breakthrough, they drastically reduced the weight of their largest spotting telescope—a device that offers much higher magnification than binoculars do—simply by changing the spacing between the three lenses in the objective.

Dan Cooper’s ornithologist friends confirmed his hunch: “You don’t really need to spend $2,500 anymore.”

The more such bells and whistles a pair of bins had, the more expensive it was. If you were shopping for binoculars in the aughts, you’d need to shell out $500 for a decent pair and several times that amount for the top of the line. That’s what conservation biologist and ornithologist Dan Cooper of the Resource Conservation District of the Santa Monica Mountains in Calabasas, Calif., did in 2009, when he bought a pair of $2,500 binoculars from Leica, which is regarded as one of the premier manufacturers of binoculars and other sporting optics, along with Swarovski Optik and Zeiss.

But in 2016, when Cooper started testing and reviewing binoculars in the $150 to $350 range for Wirecutter, the product-recommendation service of the New York Times, he was surprised to find that the market had changed. “I was like, damn, these are all pretty good,” he says. His ornithologist friends confirmed his hunch: “You don’t really need to spend $2,500 anymore.” Cooper’s top pick of the binoculars he tested, Athlon Optics’ first-generation Midas model, has most of the same features that were once reserved for the priciest binoculars. Yet they retail for just $250. And 10 years after he started reviewing binoculars in that price range, they still come out on top.

Still, there are some situations in which Cooper says his Leicas have the edge on the Athlons. “If there’s a small bird very far away in bad light, I’ll use my Leicas because they have a lot more color accuracy and sharpness at those far distances,” whereas the less expensive models get a little muddy at the edges of the image. Expensive binoculars, with their better build quality, also aren’t going to break as easily, he adds.

Meanwhile binocular technology continues to advance, albeit perhaps not as dramatically as it did a quarter of a century ago. When Fiedler was designing the NL Pure line, which debuted in 2020, he was trying to improve on a predecessor that was already considered the gold standard. He focused on expanding the field of view, the width and height of the image section that is visible through the binoculars.

A wide field of view is desirable for bird-watching because it makes it easier to find a bird in dense foliage or in the sky and to track a bird on the move. Ultimately Fiedler and his colleagues developed a 70-degree apparent field of view—the widest available in this class of binocular—which required a lot of finessing to eliminate the accompanying optical aberrations. And they improved the ergonomics, refining the focusing mechanism to make it smooth yet precise.

Fiedler still sees room for improvement. Perhaps further tweaks to the arrangement of the lenses in the objective can reduce the diameter of these lenses and thus the weight of both binoculars and spotting scopes. Maybe they could develop a housing made of carbon, which is renowned for being durable and lightweight, and do away with the rubber armor that protects the instruments against shock, he suggests. “Just let me dream.”