Deth

Fitness and everything else

Carson Blackwave 10x50 Monocular Is Almost Good Enough For Me

I’m visually impaired and tend to need to use a monocular to see almost anything from items on the shelves in a store to menus in take out places. Basically I use it dozens of times a day every day.

Sadly my old go to Vanguard telescopes seem to be no longer being manufactured. It’s a shame since other than the rubber thing that folds up and down around the eye piece wearing out those things have been awesome for me. I’ve tried several other ones and they just haven’t been what I was looking for.

I’ve been through several of these Carson Blackwave monocular now. The first one I lost while bushwhacking to a geocache. through boulders with it in my hand and tree branch caught the strap and broke it. I didn’t realize until I was 300 feet a way. I was searching for a smallish black thing in the woods with lots of thorns and rocks while being visually impaired without my tool to help me see so that went about as well as expected.

I liked this monocular that I ordered another when when we got home. Thankfully they’re only 25 dollars or so. It’s certainly not perfect for me but it does work well and the price is right for when I lose or break it having to use it so often.

They do, at least to my eyes, have a nice sharp and bright image and does magnify enough for my needs. Physically it’s a little bit bigger than I’d prefer it to be but it’s hard to guess the size of something until you have it in your own hands.

They work well enough I’ve bought several of them even though after a few months they seem to fail in the same way. It’s the part that you turn to focus that loosens and eventually will come apart. Once it does separate it is useless to me. We’ve tried superglue with no success.

I don’t necessarily hold this as a huge negative. I use and abuse them hard and it does cost $25ish dollars. I feel like I get the $25 value out of it since the optics to me seem to be pretty good. Better than some telescopes I’ve paid 2 or 3 times as much for. I have to keep in mind realistic expectations for the price I paid. I can’t lie and say I wouldn’t prefer for it to last longer because of course I would!

The only other less than great thing about this particular telescope for me is it doesn’t quite focus perfectly for me at a close enough distance. The TV for example is about 8 feet from my couch and I can’t get it to quite focus at that close of a range.

Maybe one of these days I’ll break down and buy an expensive one for when I’m not out in the woods or doing something to potentially beat it up and have the best of both worlds.