Review by Elderbear for Bushnell Falcon 10×50 Wide Angle Binoculars (Black)
Rating:
I bought a pair of these on sale (from my “gold box” — 10×50 is supposed to be the ideal for stargazing. I figured that this might come at the price of some chromatic distortion (tolerable) or difficulty focusing (intolerable). Last night was a “clear” night here in the South Bay. I live about a mile inland, on the coastal edge of Los Angeles’ vast light pollution. No marine layer, and I quickly pulled the full moon into focus, then adjusted the other eye-piece. They work for me, but if my eyes get much worse … I’ll have to pass them on to somebody younger.Enough of the moon, already. I wanna see something I don’t see on a regular basis. A quick scan of Orion showed some nebulosity visible, even above city lights. They feel steady. I’m looking forward to more star time.I didn’t notice any chromatic aberation. I have only three minor complaints:1) No tripod socket for making sure that kids can see what you want them too see. No socket was promised … so this is not a really fair complaint.2) Lens caps are cheap and tend to fall off. Watch out for them. It wouldn’t have cost that much more to manufacture better lens caps–Bushnell ought to fix this one.3) I would have designed the adjustable lens with a broader range of diopters for those of us who don’t quite see as well as we used to.All in all, a great pear of binocs for searching the night sky.

Review by Mustafa Jamil for Bushnell Falcon 10×50 Wide Angle Binoculars (Black)
Rating:
These binoculars cost a hair over twenty five bucks on amazon right now – you’re not going to beat that deal in terms of value for money anywhere. They have decent optics.

However, don’t think you’re getting high-quality construction for that money. These literally disintegrated on me on a recent international trip where they were subjected to neglible abuse (they were mostly carried around in a small backpack on long hikes and sometimes tightly packed in my suitcase). The shaft that couples the two eyepieces to the focusing mechanism is held together with flimsy plastic on both ends, and one of the ends simply snapped off, leaving me with an unusable set of binoculars.

The warranty on these is laughable (you have to pay to ship these – at a cost that’s well over half the cost of buying a new pair – to Bushnell where they determine whether it’s a manufacturer defect and, if so, send you a repaired item in a few weeks), so my options were to buy a new pair or to try to repair these on my own. I opted for the latter.

In so doing, I took a look inside. It looks like Bushnell cut every corner possible when throwing these together. Most metal edges have been poorly milled, resulting in uneven surfaces. A white adhesive substance has unevenly and sloppily been applied inside to hold the optics assembly together. Not encouraging.

That said, I’d buy these again. Even if I burn through one of these every year due to the shoddy construction, I’d have to go a decade of doing so before I’d have spent enough to equal the cost of a well constructed pair of binoculars that gave me 10×50 magnification.

Review by Diane G. Ward for Bushnell Powerview 12×25 Compact Folding Roof Prism Binocular (Black)
Rating:
I purchased these binoculars to bring to concerts and plays. The size was perfect for my small evening purse, but I didn’t realize just how well they worked. Wish that I would have owned them when I was sitting in the upper stratosphere at the Celine Dion concert in Las Vegas. They go with me to every event now to ensure a “good” seat every time.

Review by Zen Williston for Bushnell Powerview 12×25 Compact Folding Roof Prism Binocular (Black)
Rating:
I have shared a pair with a friend for more than a year and I must say I was amazed the first time I looked through them, having had all my experience with a [$] pair of older compact binoculars. These were nearly as good and a fraction of the price. Highly recommended.

Review by for Bushnell Powerview 12×25 Compact Folding Roof Prism Binocular (Black)
Rating:
These binoculars are much smaller than my other 16x Bushnells, but surprisingly are comparable in quality. The greatest advantage of having small binoculars is that they are portable, and lightweight. One would expect to loose a lot of quality compared to larger ones, considering these advantages. But to my surprise, that trade-off was worth it.
Bottom line, lower price, higher portability, much lighter in weight make these binoculars a winner in its category.