Night Owl Explorer Binoculars

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by: H. J. Rossi (Shawnee Mission, KS USA)
on: Saturday, 15-November-2008

Night Owl Explorer Binoculars

I mainly selected this NOXB3 Night Owl product on the recommendation of a user on another site. It was a long review, and it was obvious he was very knowledgeable on electronics and specifically, night vision equipment. He especially praised the double optic feature, an expensive design which is rare in such a reasonably priced device.

The binoculars got a good field test I thought, with a 10 night border watch at the Tex/Mex border in October, 2008. This is a hostile, violent environment south of Corpus Christi, Texas, with very fine dust that can invade even the most well-sealed electronics. During the test, there was also a light, with sometimes steady, rain. Neither problem bothered our unit. The terrain itself is hostile, with cactus, needle spike bushes and ball burrs that easily penetrate a military utility ACU uniform, thus the unit was used on occasion to simply observe a reasonably safe pass when walking in areas not on the beaten path or maintenance roads.

The eye piece end has eye-adjustment, but we found that they were comfortable to view while wearing glasses, and adjusted the vision part accordingly. On the focus end, the reader must understand that night vision devices require considerable fine-tuning to put your image in focus, but our unit did well with this, out to 75 or 100 yards, and although fuzzy, were usable even beyond that.

DOWNSIDE: The one, but irritating, downside was the focusing stability. Although the eye adjustment had firm and notched stops, the focus did not, and dropping the unit from your eyes onto your chest could slightly move your hard-fought-for fine focusing. To combat this, the user could gently rest them on the chest or simply continue to hold them in the rest position. Another option is a tripod, and the maker installed the nice feature of a female receiving post under the unit to receive the tripod screw.

Another small, but irritating feature were inside flaps released by Velcro. these were loud and non-tactical, and an issue where stealth is important. This is by-passed by simple folding down the flaps and ignored. The opening Velcro piece was fairly small, and if careful, removed with only a slight, small, noise.
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Continuing....During the test, the unit was also used by another operator who had considerable experience with night vision equipment and owned a Generation 1 unit made by another company. He, frankly, was amazed at the performance of this Night Owl. Far more clarity and depth of field than he was used to. During the times I was using a more powerful unit furnished by the organization, he used my Night Owl, rather than his own.

Overall, I rated this Night Owl NOXB3 s 4.5, considering the Generation 1 technology and its reasonable price, I thought it was a good value for the money spent.

(Reviewer note: In Product Dimensions, it advises the weight of this unit is 8.8 pounds which is incorrect. The true weight is 2.0 pounds.)

Rossi