Vortex Vanquish Reverse Porro Prism Binoculars

Soy apasionado observador de la naturaleza y del cielo.
He comprado 10 binoculares. Tengo desde los más pequeños (10×25) hasta los de capacidad respetable (18-40×80). He adquirido de varias marcas [Celestron, Bushnell, Vortex, Gigapenguin, Vanta y Wallis] y en resumen, creo que la mejor compra, tomando en cuenta costo-beneficio, son estos, los Vortex Vanquish. Son realmente baratos, potentes, pequeños y ligeros. Caben en la guantera del auto -acostumbro llevar binoculares en cada uno de mis autos-. Tienen buen alcance y una claridad de imagen notable, además de un diseño bonito, moderno. Los recomiendo al 100%. Ya regalé un par de ellos y pienso adquirir otros.

This review is for the Vanquish 8×26 model. The box says “Made in the Philippines.”

Initial impression: these are perfect for lightweight critter-watching with a wider field of view than others in this size. They easily fit into a coat or a car door pocket. They’re encased in dark green ridged plastic for grip and the build quality seems fine to me. In 2022, $95 is almost disposable, so if they’re stolen or I drop them into a swamp I’ll grimace and buy a new pair.

Image quality is excellent — bright with a sharp circle if you use the twist-out eye cups. As I age I’m getting more far-sighted, so I don’t use eyeglasses at typical small bird observing distances, The documentation says to keep the eye cups close to the ocular lenses if you do use eyeglasses.

Field of view is given at 6.7 degrees or 352/feet at 1000 years. They are noticeably wider-field than an old Nikon 8×25 Travelite which says 5.6 degrees (and much easier to adjust) and comparable to my 10×42 Promaster unit that is imprinted 330 feet at 1000 yards.

Durability: I’ve had them less than a day, so no problems. Most of the negative comments I’ve seen are about units that arrived broken or otherwise defective, or which had the strap attachments break off quickly. Use your Amazon replacement privileges for that. Vortex claims a lifetime warranty if you don’t lose or intentionally damage it, and this appears to be true without hassle in some discussions of their spotting scopes. My unit is lightweight intentionally but solid. I’ll update my review if something bad happens, but at the moment I’m delighted.

Image claire et format agréable

As this is a review of the Vanquish 8×26, I thought it’d be useful to compare it to the Diamondback HD, which I also had a chance to use side-by-side.

These both fall into the compact type of binoculars. They’re both fairly small and lightweight, but the Vanquish is just a bit smaller and lighter weight (by a couple of ounces). I’m using these largely for birding, but I wanted a pair that could fit in the back of my bicycle bag in the event I want to look at shorebirds or I’m somewhere where I want to observe birds, possibly in a forested area.

I also have a pair of Celestron Granite 8×42 binoculars, and those are TREMENDOUS. They’re bright, clear, super sharp, and provide VERY colorful images, even in very low light. They have have great Field Of View, about 426′. These binoculars provide pinpoint focus and really pick things out of every situation.

The budget binoculars in this review can’t touch the Granites, but knowing what is possible (and sure, there are even better binoculars than the Granites, but those are very serious binoculars, touching significantly into high end territory).

There are experts who will tell you not to even bother buying ANY set of binoculars under $100 if you’re interested in quality. They sort of have a valid point. Neither the Vanquish nor the Diamondback HD are going to give you the big, bright, super sharp, incredibly colorful images of the Granites. And they’re not going to match what a company like Swarovski or Zeiss can provide with their compact binoculars. So when you’re spending ~$100 range, you have to adjust your expectations.

The Vanquish and Diamondback HD each have their strengths and weaknesses. As I said above, don’t expect the super sharpness and resolution of something at the level of the Granites (or even a Nikon Monarch 5). But both of them are adequate in that department.

The Diamondback HD a hair sharper than the Vanquish and provide readily apparent more contrast and color saturation than the Vanquish. Looking at things that are white, the Diamondback HD presents a brighter white. And looking into bushes, the darker areas are more easily seen. But where the Diamondback HD fails is that there is some significant purple fringing, particularly on the edge of bright objects. And it gets in the way of a completely coherent image. Looking at a seagull in the water, I saw the seagull, its white feathers a bit brighter than with the Vanquish, but then there’s this almost neon thin edge of purple. It was distracting. There’s also some reflected glare in the image, although the Vanquish is not without that either.

The Vanquish, in contrast, aren’t as colorful, as contrasty, or bright. It’s a bit blander image in that regard. In darker, more shadowy areas, you can’t see into them as well as the Diamondback HD, which is part of the relative lack of brightness..

I may seem like I’m going to damn the Vanquish with faint praise, but what IS presented is more coherent. There’s no purple fringing to get in the way of the image. What you see is whole and pretty good. Eye relief for eyeglass wearers is fine enough. If you wear glasses, you may lose a teeny bit of the outsides, but just a wee bit, if that. Ironically, the Diamondback HDs, while it offers longer eye relief, it takes away in that relative regard with their narrower Field Of View. It’s practically a wash, and I’d say that you come out ahead a bit in that regard with the Vanquish.

The Vanquish, visually, aren’t perfect. Again, the view isn’t the brightest, the sharpest, or the most colorful. Their sharpness is fine, but what you don’t is the sense of them being insightful. They’re not razor sharp. For example, seeing a cormorant from about 75 feet away, I could see a little bit more of the individual feather detail with the Diamondback HD. The colors, including some of the iridescence, were more vivid, more apparent with the Diamondbacks. That added color and brightness can really add some additional excitement to seeing birds. But that darn purple fringing kept distracting me. With the Vanquish, there wasn’t anything overtly distracting, so again, there wasn’t anything overtly annoying about them other than the lack of vividness and extremely fine detail.

But the Vanquish had a couple of subtle aberrations. There’s a slight curvature at the edges, but also as I’d pan with them, I could see some ever so slight wave-like distortion of the image, even near the center. It’s very, VERY subtle, but I noticed it. Overall, none of the visual flaws were overt or strong enough to discard them as an option. I wanted a decent pair of binoculars I can keep in my bike bag and not worry about them or them adding too much weight. My Granites weigh about 1 1/2 lbs compared to about half that for the Vanquish.

Physically, I found the Vanquish to be able to hold more easily in my hands (My hands are slightly on the smaller side for a guy.) I found their design to be easier to hold with one hand. Even with my slightly smaller than average hand size, the compactness of the Diamondback HD 8×28, as roof prisms, were a bit too small to handle comfortably. I preferred the slightly more beefiness of the Vanquish to grasp onto.

Another HUGE flaw of the Diamondback HD (and others have mentioned this in other forums) is that their design is pretty poor for those who do NOT wear glasses. Their eye relief design is so much that trying to use them with the eye pieces pulled out (you use them all the way in with eyeglasses) makes it hard not to see the the shadow of the inside walls of the binoculars. In other words, there’s always these very faint, ghost-like black circles in your view. Using glasses, that is generally not a problem. In contrast, with the Vanquish, the view is fine regardless of whether you use them with or without eyeglasses.

Everyone likes the Vortex lifetime warrantee. If anything happens to them other than loss, Vortex will fix or replace them. One downside to porro prisms is that the optics can get knocked out of whack. Not a problem with the Vortex warrantee.

It’s said that porro prism binoculars are cheaper to manufacture than roof prism ones, so that similar money will get you better performance than room prisms in the low end of things. And with roof prisms, thechallenges they present to designers require much more expensive glass, including coatings, to fix. And THAT costs lots of money. So you won’t get all of those corrections with less expensive room prism binoculars. I know that when looking at full-sized binoculars, it wasn’t until I was looking at close to $300 binoculars that the performance really jumped to another level.

While the Diamondback HDs give you a slight taste of the higher end, with their brighter, more colorful image, their flaws are also more apparent. And from looking around at other options, it just seems that sub-$200 models offer up flaws, and you need to decide where you want to compromise. I can tell you that with full-sized binoculars, the Nikon Prostaff 7, at ~$200, was a jump up in color rendition and saturation from the Prostaff 3, at ~$100, but the Monarch 5, at ~$280, was a HUGE leap in that department, with images just popping through them.

So when I first got the Diamondback HDs and looked through them, I got a bit excited as to the life of the image I was seeing through them. But I kept coming back to the Vanquish. Even though they provided a little more bland an image, there wasn’t anything overtly distracting me viewing through them either. They are easy to hold. There’s enough eye relief for eyeglass wearers. The FOV is better than average for a compact set of binoculars (about 330′). And the size and weight are easy to handle. Add to that, the warranty, and it’s a nice buy.

In the end, you have to decide on the compromises you want to make, i.e., money, size, etc. Want to pay $400 on a pair of high end, compact binoculars? You’ll get appreciably better performance. By the way, I also tried a pair of Pentax 8×25 roof prisms (~$85) and they weren’t very good at all for using with eyeglasses.

All in all, the Vanquish are fine for the money. Just don’t expect them to perform like >$200 models.