VITAL STATS
Small and light enough to be easily portable and held in the hands for short periods, but also with sufficient aperture and magnification to reveal more detail than popular hand-held binoculars like 10x50s, 15x56 binoculars occupy a special niche. We were eager, then, to see how Explore Scientific's G400 15x56s performed.
Taking them out of their packaging, our first impressions were of robustness and compactness. This is due in part to their heft and the substantial untextured (but not slippery when dew-dampened) rubber armour. The smoothly operating hinge has a satisfying resistance to adjustment, which should prevent you from accidentally resetting the interpupillary distance.
The centre focus wheel is alsoextreme. This slow and smooth focusing means that it is extremely precise, which makes it easy to find the point at which the target object snaps into focus. The ‘beyond infinity’ focus enables people with mild short-sightedness to use the binoculars without glasses if they wish. The right eyepiece adjustment has a range of +/-3 dioptres, so the binoculars will tolerate some focus disparity between your eyes.
