Famous Trails FT 1200 Night Eyes

Comment: Pros:
- rugged, rubberized housing;
- strong IR illumination LED;

Cons:
- lot of black spots in view;
- any light source nearby oversaturates the image;
- I wasn't able to focus it sharp enough;
- battery cover hard to screw back;
- needs special battery;

I've bought this monocular and compared it to two Night Owl products with similar features and pricing (the 3x and the 5x magnification versions). I tried them indoors without any lighting, and outdoors at night in a park-like setting with dark areas and some lights that were weaker than streetlights. Everything in my review is based on comparing the two brand's products.

The FT1200 is more appealing with its rubberized housing that looks way more rugged and tough. However, it uses batteries that are more expensive and less commonly available than the AAs other products use, and it's hard to fit the battery cover on its thread so it screws back without seizing. Since it's all plastic, I predict the thread will wear out sooner or later as the batteries get changed.

The IR illumination is stronger than in the competing products, but every other aspect of the optics performs worse. With this technology it's normal to have some tiny dark spots in the view, but this unit had so many it was annoying, and there were way fewer in the Night Owl monoculars. I was never able to focus as sharply as with the Night Owls. The occasional outdoor lights in the distance made the whole image so light that nothing else could be seen, even if the light source was far and just at the edge of the viewable area. The same lights did not ruin the rest of the view in the other brand's products.

I loved the ruggedness and grip of this monocular, but the image quality was so noticeably worse that I returned this, and kept the Night Owl with the 5x magnification.