Eaglet & Audubon – upper mid-price roof and porro prisms

More Information  · Images of Some Features Price $329.95 List Price $449.95 Optical Type Porro Prism Field of view 8.2° Field of view 1000 yards 430' Exit Pupil 5.2mm Relative Brightness 26.8 Twilight Factor 19.3 Eye Relief 11mm Interpupillary Distance 59-72mm Close Focus 10' Weight 27.5 oz Height 5.5" Armored Yes Waterproof Yes Warranty 25 years

There is much to be said for the Audubon’s 8.5x magnification, compared to the more common 8x. The extra half-power gives you the extra reach you sometimes need to make a positive identification on a distant bird. It also gives you a slightly larger image of a close-in bird to add to your enjoyment. And it does both without adding so much extra magnification that the image becomes hard to hold still enough to see sharply (go much over 9x in a hand-held binocular and the image bounces around with every breath and muscle tremor). The Audubon’s 44mm aperture gives you 21% greater light-gathering than a 40mm bino for images that are bright and high in contrast – even in the low light of early morning or twilight.

The Audubon is a center focus B-body porro prism with premium fully-multicoated BaK-4 prisms for highest light transmission and contrast. The lightweight magnesium body is sealed to be waterproof, although it is not nitrogen-purged and so is not guaranteed to be fogproof in all climate extremes. The Audubon might not survive full immersion for long periods, but it is certainly watertight enough to come in dry when you get caught outside in a heavy rain. It should even survive tropical use with moderate care.

The rubber armor is firm enough for a secure grip, resilient enough for long-term comfort, and lightly textured so your fingers won’t slip. Other changes are more subtle, and may not even seem significant until you have the Audubon in your hands and up to your eyes. For instance, what appear to be purely “cosmetic" half moon notches on the sides of the housing (where the words “Swift" and “Waterproof" are stamped into the armor) actually relieve the pressure on the upper palm of your hand where it meets your fingers. The “golf ball" texturing in the sharply angled focus channel aligns with your finger tips to provide a secure and comfortable hold. The slight rollover in the armor at the top of the housing makes it possible to settle your index fingers there and focus the oversized focus knob with your longer middle fingers. There are provisions for adding an optional tripod adapter #1185 for extended no-hands viewing from a fixed observing location.

The Audubon comes with a hard case, a 1.5" wide woven neck strap, twist up and turn-to-lock rubber eyecups, objective lens covers, and eyepiece covers. An eyepiece rainguard is not included, but rainguard #1299 would be a welcome option to keep raindrops from beading on the eyepiece lenses when out in the field.

The Audubon’s premium five-element eyepieces give you a wide field of view with relatively little field curvature. The 8.5x Audubon has an excellent delineation of details in the center of the field due to the somewhat higher resolving power of its larger aperture optics vis-a-vis competitively priced 40mm and 42mm binoculars. It does have a limited eye relief that will narrow its field of view for eyeglass wearers. Eye relief is the distance behind the eyepiece that your eye has to be to see the full field of view. It is important for all birders, and critical for eyeglass wearers, who can get no closer to the eyepiece, obviously, than the distance between their glasses and their eyes. Swift claims 17mm of eye relief for the Audubon, which should be plenty for an eyeglass wearer. However, the actual usable eye relief of the Audubon is closer to 12mm than it is to 17mm. No one with glasses is going to see much more than 2/3rds of the possible field of view through the Audubon. With glasses on, the usable field of view through the Audubons of about 360 feet at 1000 yards – still pretty good, but a long way from the 430 feet that is theoretically possible.

However, this short eye relief is somewhat compensated for by a wider field than competitive binoculars (so wide that it’s almost impossible to see the entire field without looking from side to side – even without glasses). The result is that the usable field of the 8.5 x 44mm Audubon with glasses is often similar to competitive longer eye relief binoculars without glasses.

A review of the new waterproof Swift Audubon in Better View Desired said, “the improvements to handling, the waterproofness, the exceptional optical performance, and the classic 8.5x44 design of the new Audubons, with its trademark easy-view, make them a Better View Desired Starred Product, among the finest optical instruments available to the birder today. If you have lusted after the 8.5x42 Swarovski ELs, but been put off by the price, take a look at the Audubons. They provide 95% if the optical and field performance at quarter of the price (though, admittedly with out the fine nuances of handling and the mystique of the roofs). If these are not poor man’s ELs, it is because they have enough valuable features of their own to keep the comparison from being that one-sided. You might as well ask if the ELs are “extra-expensive" Audubons. If you have been looking for an optimized porro design like the Nikon SEs, but, again, found the price a barrier, you owe it to yourself to get to a Swift dealer and take a look at the new Audubons. Swift continues to respond to birder’s needs with truly “birdworthy" binoculars, and the Audubons continue to be the flagship Swift."

Another review, by a nationally-known birder in the Peregrine Observer, a publication of the Cape May Bird Observatory, said, “Undoubtedly the best performing birding binocular for the buck . . . This is a glass that performs as well as binoculars more than twice the Audubon’s price!"