Adasion 12x42 HD Binoculars with Phone Adapter

The birds, fish, frogs, and turtles in my neighborhood have become my new friends since social distancing began, and these binoculars have been spectacl-ar in helping me identify them. I’d never used binoculars before this new hobby, so here are some things I’ve learned that might be helpful to first-time users: Binoculars always have two numbers in the spec, AxB. A represents the magnification – the bigger the number, the more zoomed-in the image looks. B represents the size of the objective lens, which is the piece of glass at the far end of the binoculars. The bigger the number, the brighter and clearer the image looks. They also have a focus wheel that sits between the two halves, which you’ll have to rotate depending on whether you want to focus on something close or super far away. There’s also usually an additional fine tuner on the right eyepiece that will allow you to adjust for differences between your two eyes. So when using a pair of binoculars for the first time, you should close your right eye and use the focus wheel for just your left eye, and then close your left eye and use the fine tuner for your right eye. After that you can just directly use the focus wheel. I had an old pair of Bushnell 12x25 binoculars at home before I got this Adasion 12x42 set. Here’s a comparison, with things I learned from experience: 1/ Size: The Adasion is bigger because of the larger objective lens. You can see the size difference in my first picture. 2/ Eyepiece: The Adasion has eye cups that rotate in and out, which give your eyes some breathing distance from the eyepiece lenses. You can see in the second picture the right eye cup has been extended while the left one has not. The Bushnell didn’t have this feature, so my eyelashes were always brushing against the glass, and the glass itself would frequently fog up. 3/ Straps: This seems like a trivial one, but it bothered me more than I expected. Bushnell’s straps attach at the center, while Adasion’s straps attach on each side. This results in the Bushnell hanging somewhat perpendicular to my torso, which makes it really annoying as it bounces along while I walk. The Adasion just lies comfortably flush against my torso. 4/ Protective covers: You can see these in the first picture. Each objective lens has an individual rubber cover that hangs off the end. If you don’t like them, you can remove them – they’re attached by a rubber ring that slides off easily. But I think they’re great and protect the glass from smudges. The eyepiece lenses have a joint cover that you take off completely; I only put it back on when I’m done for the day. 5/ Picture quality: The most important difference. You can see four pictures I took through both binoculars. Interestingly, I found that the Bushnell binoculars were very slightly more magnified than the Adasion. I actually prefer the wider field of view of the Adasion, which is more forgiving of unsteady hands. The Bushnell also starts to get blurry on the edges (see the fence and bench or the floating grass in the fish photo), while the Adasion is much clearer throughout. In addition, colors are a lot brighter through the Adasion, while the Bushnell is a bit faded. This brings me to my last piece of advice: the smartphone adapter is pretty cool. I had no idea what a phone adapter was in the beginning – I assumed it was some kind of USB cable that digitally connected the binoculars to your phone, and you’d have to download an app or something to take pictures. Nope. So apparently, you can just hold up your phone camera to the eyepiece of any binoculars, have your phone “look” through the binoculars (monocular?), and you simply use the camera app to snap whatever your phone sees. It works surprisingly well as an amateur telephoto lens. That’s all I did to take the pictures from the Bushnell. Turns out though, it’s kind of hard to hold the binoculars in one hand, your phone in the other, and both steady enough while maneuvering your thumb to snap the photo. It’s flat out impossible to take video. So the purpose of this phone adapter is to make it easier by holding your phone in place. It’s a very simple piece of hardware with a spring-loaded clamp around your phone (both an iPhone 6s and iPhone 11 fit just fine) and a round cap that attaches to either of the binoculars’ eye cups. For best results, attach your phone without the eye cups extended. Righty tighty all the way. I find that provides the optimal phone-to-eyepiece distance for the best view from the camera. I also did some extra research on phone adapters and tried to buy one for my Bushnell. The universal circular ones have a screw cap where the attachment can be expanded or contracted in order to fit any eye cup. But I actually found that the screw mechanism made the attachment so thick that my phone camera was too far away from the eyepiece to see much through it – all I got was a small hole. In contrast, the adapter that comes with the Adasion was built to fit the Adasion eye cups perfectly. It’s a nice snug fit so your phone (even a heavy iPhone 11) will stay in place at just the right distance from the lens and without needing any hand support. The last thing I’ll say about the phone adapter is not to be surprised that your picture is a circle in a black vignette. That makes sense, since that’s what you see when your eyes look through the binoculars too. The rectangular photos from other reviews can be produced by either zooming using the camera’s zoom function or just cropping after the fact. Okay that’s as much as I’ve learned so far through my amateur explorations, hope you’ve found it helpful. :)