Hunting for a great pair of binoculars that you can slip into your pocket for a hike? One of our favorite lightweight and compact binocular picks, the Celestron TrailSeeker ED 8×32, is marked down to just $280 on Amazon, a healthy $80 discount off the usual price.
Photograph: Scott Gilbertson
Celestron
TrailSeeker ED 8×32 Binoculars
While these may not be the fanciest or highest-magnification binoculars, they make up for it with an appealing price and excellent optical quality. They’re our binocular expert Scott Gilbertson’s typical pick for a lightweight pair and are a great choice for casual bird-watching or sightseeing on a hike. They’re also a good choice for beginners who aren’t ready to haul around one of the larger, higher-magnification options.
Unlike other binoculars at this price point, the TrailSeeker ED 8×32 features BaK-4 Prism glass, a feature normally reserved for much more expensive offerings. It helps reduce the amount of light lost in the prism, which should give a noticeable boost to image clarity and sharpness, as well as brightness.
The result is an excellently sharp image in the center, with a generously sized sweet spot that covers around 60 percent of the field of view. Our reviewer appreciated how easy they were to use, and even though there was a bit of softness around the edges, it didn’t stop him from catching good glimpses of his favorite birds and other wildlife.
They have an excellent focus range and linear field of view too, with an impressive 409 feet of linear field of view at 1,000 feet, where most other options fall just under 400. That gives them a nice, generous view, and avoids any feelings of claustrophobia you might experience from tighter fields of view.
If you’re interested in learning more about the TrailSeeker ED 8×32, check out our full review, with hands-on impressions plus all the details about focusing and ergonomics. You can also hike over to our full roundup of binoculars if you’re curious what all these numbers mean, or just to check out what the most ardent bird-watchers are opting for.
