Thermal Imaging Monocular for Hunting, 15mm Focal Lens 256x192 Infrared Night Vision Telescope with Long Battery Life, Thermal Scopes for Outdoor Night Vision Camera Telescope (15mm)

The media could not be loaded. # Physical constructionThe device fits well in hand and feels sturdy. The buttons have a good positive click and are weather sealed. For transport a carry case is included, which has some space to store accessories.When comparing this to a smartphone dongle thermal camera there are obvious advantages to the monocular form factor. Firstly this is much tougher. It will survive a drop. A phone with a camera sticking out of it won't. Secondly, having an eyepiece is a really big advantage, in the daytime you aren't competing with screen glare and at night time the light of a screen doesn't give away your location.The GOYOJO eyepiece is good, it's bright and at 800x600 pixels it looks sharp. The viewfinder diopter has a huge range of adjustment allowing you to place the apparent distance of the image quite close or almost infinity. This range of adjustment should be really helpful for people who wear glasses.The lens cap is rubber and fits securely. It is retained on a string to make it hard to lose. The string is long enough you can easily hold it and prevent it bouncing around while you move, again just very nicely thought out little details on this product. There is also an adjustable wrist tether to prevent you dropping the device.On the bottom there is a standard ¼ inch tripod mount which is compatible with almost any tripod or monopod. When unmounted the device balances well on it's nose making it easy to place down and bring up to a viewing position which is a nice touch.# Image qualityThe sensor is 256x192 pixels and runs at 25Hz. There is no latency and the image feels very "live" through the viewfinder. The sensor is paired with quite a large and fast lens making it quite sensitive for its size. The sensor does not need to recalibrate every couple of seconds like the Seek Thermal devices and is much higher resolution than the FLIR ones in the same price range.I have the 10mm model. The included carry case has a little extra space cut out so you can tell the 15mm version is about 5mm longer (funny that).As for color palettes the device has all the major palettes you'd expect in a thermal camera. Classic "Iron Red" being the most visually appealing and "Black Hot" being the most useful in my opinion. You also get "Rainbow", "White Hot", etc, etc.The menus on the camera also allow adjustment of image brightness and contrast. The default brightness is about one click too high for my liking but this is very easy to adjust.There are also scene modes which I haven't quite figured out yet. They appear to fine tune the image for different situations.# Sample imagesI've included a few photos taken with the device: cat tax, power poles, a fence in the sunlight, and some photos of the device and my reviewing process, and a screenshot of the app. The video combines a shot of a fast moving fan to show the framerate and two others of spotting and approaching a rabbit from 200ft away. Of particular interest to me is the range you can identify such a small animal at and how easy it is to see the rabbit while it is inside a hedge and completely invisible to the naked eye. The device does not have a microphone and videos have no sound.# Bonus featuresThis thing has a freakin laser beam. It can project a red dot which is pretty accurately aligned with the center point on the screen. This allows you to make sure you are looking at the right spot even if there is no thermal contrast. Nice!# Battery lifeThe battery provided is a protected button top 18650 battery 3200mAh from ZLY. Protected means that it has an integral over discharge board in the battery. These are the same kind you would use in a high performance flashlight and are readily available if you want to carry a spare or two. But you probably don't need to, keep reading!Powered off the device draws less than 4.4 microamps. This is far below the self discharge level of lithium batteries so it's effectively zero. (If you had a magic battery which had no self discharge you'd have to swap it out once every 83 years to keep the clock in this thing going)Powered up it's drawing 294mA on average with occasional spikes to 400mA when it moves the shutter. This should result in 10 hours battery life with the included battery! Conveniently it doesn't lose settings or the clock value when changing batteries so it's painless to swap if you manage to run one flat.Turning on additional features does increase the battery draw somewhat. WiFi adds 100mA, the laser adds 20mA, recording a video adds 30mA, if you turn the screen off by short pressing the power button you save 15mA. Really though none of this matters the runtime is excellent even if you turn everything on.Charging wise the device charges whatever battery is installed when plugged into USB (C). You can also run the device while plugged in if you need even more endurance.# App and WiFiNo permissions needed for the app! This does however mean you need to connect to the WiFi network the device broadcasts manually. But this is easy. When turning on WiFi on the device it will display the SSID and Password on screen. These stay constant until you choose to change them so typing these out is a one time deal. If you are on Android you'll see the "no internet connection available" prompt after connecting the first time. Select "always stay connected" and your phone won't prompt you any more about it. From there return to the app and hit "scan".The video feed has surprisingly little latency. Approximately 50ms by my estimation. The image quality over WiFi is just as good as through the viewfinder.WiFi range is pretty good at least 30 feet with no issues. Plenty of distance to allow you to put the device somewhere you wouldn't want your head to be while you monitor from a safe or warm location.# ImprovementsMinor but I'd like to see a setting to keep WiFi on both at startup. The manual notes WiFi is disabled at startup to avoid wasting power. Reasonable! But with battery life as good as this I think it's fine to let the user spend that battery how they see fit especially when there is an indicator showing the WiFi state.# ConclusionThis is a great device, it has none of the usability issues you might be worried about if you thought this device was simply too cheap to be true. If you are buying it for hunting I think the 15mm version is going to be worth the price difference but even with the 10mm lens you can easily see a rabbit at 200 ft in pitch black. Definitely a good buy!

The media could not be loaded. One of the best things about this product is that the listed weight is not correct. While Amazon lists the weight as 2lb, that is only for the entire package which includes a hard case that comes with it. The actual monocular only weighs 12oz with a battery, making it suitable for helmet mounting which dramatically increases the utility. It has a tripod screw which means a 3D printed mount can be printed for this for helmet mounting. It also has a USB-C connection on the side which can be used to power it to a battery pack counterweight, however the battery replacement is very fast and easy and the runtime of 5 hours, makes this not necessary unlike other cheap monocular. There is an auto shutdown mode, but this should be turned off as the maximum time is only 30 minutes.The biggest issue with this monocular is that it lacks an objective focus even though it looks like it does. It is focused to infinite from the factory so its not really a practical issue unless you are using this for close up work such as diagnosing electrical circuits. This does have ocular focus adjustment, however the range is very small, so it is best left turned all the way counterclockwise and forgotten. There is no eye relief to speak of, so the FOV is dramatically reduce if wearing goggles.Base magnification is not true 1x, it is closer to 1.5-2x base, so the thermal image will not collimate with your vision. The magnification steps also does not seem to be accurate, with 3x being the true max magnification. The color palettes are the traditional white hot, black hot, red hot, and two fusions, but a unique palette that I have never seen anywhere else is "glimmer" which is a green tinted white hot. This is great if you are mounting this monocular to bridge with an IIT NVD with a green phosphor tube, although the benefit is somewhat negated due to lacking true 1x magnification for collimation of the images. There is an option in setting called scene mode which is supposed to help reduce static noise in the image based on certain environments. I would stick with the standard scene mode as city mode makes it slightly blurry, jungle darkens the screen significantly, and custom adds static noise which is counter productive.A really cool feature is an integrated red laser which allows you to point out objects to others. It would be ideal if it was an IR laser, but it's still a useful function. Although the optic for the laser is not great as there is a divergence with a secondary beam that shoots off 45 degrees from the main beam. When red laser is activated a reticle appears on screen which can be zeroed and changed between 6 different types in the settings known as "dividing line". This function means this monocular can theoretically be weapon mounted with a camera rail mount adapter. It's not designed to do this based on the instruction manual, but it could be a nice option for airguns, airsoft, and 22LR. The laser cannot be turned off when the reticle is on so a piece of electrical tape would have to be used to cover up the laser. This even has a PIP (Picture In Picture) function however strangely it can only be placed in the 4 quadrants of the screen in the settings. It cannot be placed top or bottom centered which is a big oversight.In the settings you can change the NUC (sensor refresh) from automatic or manual. The NUC is not nearly as aggressive as other monocular so auto is best. It also has a bad pixel correction feature where if a pixel on your screen is off and isn't fixed by the NUC, you can manually select it to correct it.This can take pictures and video and also view them. Video file sizes can be adjusted based on time, they should be set to 30min files for best uninterrupted footage. The SD card is internally fixed so it cannot be increased without taking apart the monocular which the screws are accessed by pulling off the eyecup. However there could also be a software block on maximum supported memory card size. The 16GB capacity is pretty good though, and you can see the exact free space on the card in the settings.Screen contrast and brightness is adjustable and I have found 5 contrast and 3 brightness to be ideal. This has a hot spot detector which will highlight the hottest spot on the screen, however with good brightness and contrast settings you should be able to naturally notice the hottest spot just as fast without the detector highlight.This can stream video by WIFI which can have a custom name and password. However this also has the ability to stream the video feed through a wired CVBS screen as well. Which is potentially useful in situations where a smartphone should not be carried and sending out wifi signals could be dangerous.Video clip in this review represents an extreme target condition of a cat laying down at 100 yards. This is roughly equivalent to a human at 700 yards.

So far I'm enjoying this thermal monocular, but I'm very disappointed in the battery life. Maybe it's because I ordered one that had been returned by another user. For me the battery has been lasting for around 30 minutes or less, which is not cool. I was look out my back yard the other morning and was a bit frusterated because I thought I should be able to see some rodents. There are often rabbits and other critters out at night. Then I suddenly realized that I could see two deer about 150 yards away and they wer behind multiple layers of trees (leaves not trunks). That got me excited. I think I'll keep it and order better batteries. Clarity could be better but the value for the money it's pretty good. It's a great size and not too heavy. It seems to work well. I'm taking off a star because of the battery life disappointment.