Shopping helpline

If you are in the market for a pair of night vision binoculars and you are still in the information gathering stage, you may be suffering from overwhelm, especially from what is available on the internet. This is a quick guide to help you cut through the dross and home in on what you need to know. It’s good to find out some of the technical stuff and make sense of the jargon, but some customer reviews are helpful too. It’s the next best thing to a personal recommendation from a friend.

Here are a couple of sites that I find useful for knowledge gathering and I have provided some tips on finding what you want. I am not expressing any opinion as to what these companies are like to deal with or their prices. Whether or not you decide to buy there is your choice but I think you will find them worth a visit, just to help clarify what you are looking for. So, in no particular order:-

Binoculars.com

Binoculars.com has a very comprehensive range of all types of binoculars and optical devices. When you visit there site, you will see across the top of the page, a tabbed menu. Depending on your current level of knowledge, you may be interested in the last tab, ‘Learn More’. The main focus on the page is an ad for a particular pair of binoculars but around it are some useful links. Unfortunately, these update when you refresh the page. You may have to do that a couple of times to find what you are interested in.

One link that is always there is a a text link - ‘Dr Binoculars - Informative Videos’. These are series of very short videos illustrating some of the main principles of binoculars. They explain some of the jargon in a few seconds. There is also a Frequntly Asked Questions link. This takes you to a page where questions are answered in slightly more depth, with good illustrations, but still a quick read.

Back to the navigation options, the left side bar has a long list of links. If you scroll down, you will find ‘Helpful Information’. Here, there is a direct link to FAQs and a link for a glossary of binocular terms. For more specific information about night vision binoculars, click the Night Vision tab at the top.

To the right of this page are pictures of various types of night vision equipment with the option to view that item or all items in that category. The left sidebar has night vision related links. The categories again and below that, customer reviews. When you click one of these, you are taken to a page with the product details and the reviews below. This is good because you can see if the customers view agrees with the manufacturers description.

What is not so good is that night vision binoculars being something of a speciality item, there are a limited number of reviews. Also, the reviews are listed by star rating. You would have to click the 5 star link to find out if your item of interest is in there. And if it is, it could also be in one star section. Continuing down the side bar, you can also view night vision equipment by manufacturer and price range.

In the main section of the page are examples of popular night vision brands, sale items and then a brief explanation of how night vision works, with links to further information. I like this navigation system. Once you are on the Night Vision tab, everything is relevant to what you are looking for.

Optics Planet

When I have searched here in specific categories, I have found the range to be smaller than at Binocular.com. Also, I find the site a bit cluttered and overwhelming. There is a big, scrolling banner across the top, what looks like a ‘tag cloud’ below it and menus down each side. And as you scroll down, the centre of the page has categories with even more links. I am curious to know how many there actually are on this page. But don’t panic.

Optics Planet also has some good information on all types of optical devices. Go first to the dark blue horizontal menu at the top. If you click ‘Product Guides’ you will be taken to an index of How To articles. They are grouped under sub headings and it is much easier to spot what you are looking for here. There is a good section on night vision devices. These articles are educational, thorough and with nice illustrations to help explain some of the points.

There is one drawback though. The site seems be set up to automatically create links. For example, every time the phrase, ‘Night Vision Device’ is used, it becomes a link to another page. This can be quite distracting. The eye gets used to scanning over them and you could miss links to some excellent video guides created by some of the equipment manufacturers.

The next item on the top menu is ‘Reviews’. This page is a very long list of equipment reviews with several alternative methods of finding the one you want. Incentives are offered, in the form of discount coupons, for people to write reviews of their purchases, to help other members of the community. One thing this suggests to me is that they are not worried about any negative comments about the Optics Planet service in these reviews.

Another community aspect of the site is the forum, also accessible from the top many. If you still have any questions you can ask them here. This seems pretty active with a lot of recent posts. If you can’t find a review of a product you are interested in, you will probably find someone here who knows about it.

I think that between these two sites, you can find out just about anything you want to know about night vision binoculars or any other type of optical equipment.