Looking for suggestions for a good Thermal Monocular for night time and daytime use. Would like to be able to use it to detect rats, rabbits and squirrels a couple hundred yards out. Price range should be below 2k.
Thermal Monocular Suggestions
- Thread starter JobyKang
- Start date
Hi
Pard and Atn have a good quality/price ratio, you can see if they have any model of what you are looking for.
Regards
Enkey
Pard and Atn have a good quality/price ratio, you can see if they have any model of what you are looking for.
Regards
Enkey
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My impression is for that amount of money you're into the 320x240 sensors. Infiray (IRay) is maybe the other manufacturer not mentioned that sells at that price point.
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I don’t think you will find anything to detect such small animals out to 200 yard for around $2000. Maybe if you add a zero we could find something to suit your needs. If you conduct an AGN search on thermal monoculars and read a few posts you will begin to see why you won’t find a monocular capable of detecting small animals from so far away within your price range.
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Check out the late night vision show on YouTube. Outdoor legacy is there store. Great guys for night vision
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I have a bering optics phenom thermal scanner. It makes no difference, day or night, scanner sees the same thing.
Finding rabbits at 200 yards, easy, although positive ID is a little hard. A cat and a rabbit will look the same till you watch movement the farther out you go.
Some random pictures, keep in mind what you see in the eyepiece is better than the pics.
Middle fox is probably 80 yards out. Jeep is at 50 yards.
Finding rabbits at 200 yards, easy, although positive ID is a little hard. A cat and a rabbit will look the same till you watch movement the farther out you go.
Some random pictures, keep in mind what you see in the eyepiece is better than the pics.
Middle fox is probably 80 yards out. Jeep is at 50 yards.
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Sorry, meant to post the price — it was $3000+ 2 years ago don’t know current pricing or availability.
was really just making a point that thermal doesn’t care, day or night.
just to add — daylight during the summer you have less of a temp difference between living and inanimate objects.
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Because a night visor can be used as a normal visor during the day and a thermal visor only in thermal function.
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Take a look at the Burris BTH50. They are a 400-300 resolution 50 hertz with 3.3 base mag. I have the BTH35. It a 2.3 base mag. Nice unit for the money. And for the little extra, I wish I bought the 50. If you are wanting 200 yards, go with a higher base magnification.
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Bering optics is usually a pretty good product for the $$$, a lot of guys are upgrading right now(since the newest and greatest is out). It’s honestly a great time to be looking, a dealer I know has several used units in. Something like this may get you into a nicer unit for the same money. I personally like Bering more than agm, I have a pulsar helion2 right now.
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Does anyone have experience with the Pulsar Axion? Looking for a thermal in the $1500-2k range
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@flionbrian outdoor legacy has some awesome video and if you call them they can certainly answer all your questions. I've purchased a few thermals through them and never had a problem. They see and use every thermal they sell so they can most likely give the best recommendations based in your needs.
@JobyKang they guy saying night vision is better just means with the current digital night vision setups out there are day time scopes with color picture. Then when it's dark they can see in the dark with the aid of ir light or a bright moon lit night. They will not detect heat but at night the ir will light up the eyes of an animal looking in your direction.
Also the pictures @Heavyopp posted will not be that good depending on daytime conditions. The thermal will indeed detect heat no matter the time of day but the sun beaming down and heating up objects so the surface temp is warm will make it much harder to detect an animal if it is in the area giving off the heat signatures. . The heat from the sun will wash out the image some if everything is hot. So keep that in mind
You will be able to detect ground squirrel at 200 yards in the right conditions without issue with a $2000 thermal. AGM, PULSAR, IRAY, bering optic might be the only 1s in that range I'd trust. I also prefer 1x base mag when possible for scanning 300 yards and closer if it's just to detect and not relying on it for ID.
Hope this helps in some way. I recommend everyone try thermal but nothing less than a 320 sensor. Remember most thermal, with the exception of some iray units, will cut image quality in half everytime you hit the digital zoom. So a 640 resolution sensor with a 1x base mag zoomed into 2x will be similar picture quality to a 320 resolution sensor with a base mag of 2x. Some other factor come into play as well but that the general run down.
@JobyKang they guy saying night vision is better just means with the current digital night vision setups out there are day time scopes with color picture. Then when it's dark they can see in the dark with the aid of ir light or a bright moon lit night. They will not detect heat but at night the ir will light up the eyes of an animal looking in your direction.
Also the pictures @Heavyopp posted will not be that good depending on daytime conditions. The thermal will indeed detect heat no matter the time of day but the sun beaming down and heating up objects so the surface temp is warm will make it much harder to detect an animal if it is in the area giving off the heat signatures. . The heat from the sun will wash out the image some if everything is hot. So keep that in mind
You will be able to detect ground squirrel at 200 yards in the right conditions without issue with a $2000 thermal. AGM, PULSAR, IRAY, bering optic might be the only 1s in that range I'd trust. I also prefer 1x base mag when possible for scanning 300 yards and closer if it's just to detect and not relying on it for ID.
Hope this helps in some way. I recommend everyone try thermal but nothing less than a 320 sensor. Remember most thermal, with the exception of some iray units, will cut image quality in half everytime you hit the digital zoom. So a 640 resolution sensor with a 1x base mag zoomed into 2x will be similar picture quality to a 320 resolution sensor with a base mag of 2x. Some other factor come into play as well but that the general run down.
Neal,
I'm not there yet with themal, the $$ must go toward some other projects first.
But I'm keeping a close eye on thermal, because come the time I will want one...!
And your comments were super helpful — something I can't just pick up from reading product descriptions and spec sheets.
THANK YOU for taking the time to share your expertise.
Matthias
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I still use the combination of a thermal monocular and then switch to the IR. I don't shoot anything at 200 yards at night, but the external light I use is more than capable of lighting up to and past that distance. I would like to go thermal, but even though the price points have gotten better, I have done well with the thermal monocular and IR for 100 yards and under. My monocular is sub - $1000 and I can at least identify the heat signature at 100 yards with it well enough to know it is a possible target.
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Yesterday I took my good lady and my 2 dogs on a walk and we managed to spend a pleasant hour watching a kingfisher. Now never having seen Mrs 2 in such rapture iv set me old grey matter a trembling on a way I can earn some home based browny points and come up with, Binoculars! Now Mrs 2 isn't one for carrying erm anything ever so I'd like if you will some suggestions for compact decent bins, and as I'm a tight fisted man I'd like them to not make me whince if possible. I know a bit about scopes and such but nothing about binoculars so I welcome advice.
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Are you looking for thermal or regular binos?
Thermal binos will be $4500 if the pulsar mergers are still on sale. You can also look at cameralandny.com, eurooptic.com, and other sites like that to get deals on refurbished units. I haven't seen refurbished binos available yet but I stopped looking at all that when I was satisfied with my setup and wasn't planning on expanding my collection.
Let me know the specifics of what you are after and I'll try my best to help you out.
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