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Pros - Compact and lightweight - Excellent field of view - Good close focus range Cons - Not weatherproof at all - Poor light transmission - Painfully short eye relief

Welcome to my review of the Bushnell PowerView 8×25 Porro Binoculars. This set of binoculars is a budget entry in the compact genre of binoculars. Bushnell is hit and miss when it comes to the quality of their optics, so I was curious to see how the PowerView would stack up to the competition. Let’s take a look, shall we?

What Do I Get in the Box?

First, let’s see what you get for the money when you buy a pair of Bushnell PowerView 8×25 Porro Binoculars. In the box, you should find:

• The Bushnell PowerView 8×25 Porro Binoculars
• Carrying case
• Neck strap
• Lens caps

The included accessories are basic and are designed to get you started. The case is a bit of a tight fit, sometimes causing the right diopter adjustment to move when you are putting the bins into the case or taking them out. The neck strap is thin and not very padded, so I quickly replaced it with a much better neck strap.

How Much Magnification Do I Get?

With 25mm objective lenses, the Bushnell PowerView 8×25 Porro Binoculars provides 8X magnification. The image quality is pretty good, considering how inexpensive these binoculars are, but degrades quickly when you start losing your light. The clarity and resolution, though, is really good in bright conditions.

Close focus on the Bushnell PowerView 8×25 Porro Binoculars is a short 6 feet, making these binoculars good for viewing from almost any distance. The field of view is 340 feet at 1,000 yards, so you have plenty of viewable terrain to work with.

What Type of Optics Do the Binoculars Have?

The Bushnell PowerView 8×25 Porro Binoculars utilizes a porro prism design with BK–7 prism glass. As a result of the use of BK–7 prisms, you won’t get as pristine or bright an image as you might find on slightly more expensive binoculars.

The optics are only fully coated, not multi-coated, and the prism glass does not receive any phase coating. The end result of this economizing move is to yield a set of binoculars that does not have the light gathering capability that they could otherwise have. I have no real problem, in principal, with Bushnell using BK–7 prism glass, even though the price of BaK–4 glass has come down considerably over the years, but the lack of fully multi-coated lenses really cripples these binos in low-light conditions.

Another major problem with the Bushnell PowerView 8×25 Porro Binoculars lies in the eye relief. Eye relief is a very short 12mm, which makes them almost useless for eyeglass wearers. Even without eyeglasses, using this set of binoculars often requires pressing the eyecups against your eyeballs, which is both uncomfortable and annoying.

The focus knob is nicely textured and stippled, making it easy to operate the binoculars even with gloved hands. The wheel moves smoothly, with just enough resistance to ensure you don’t accidentally defocus your image after you’ve got it locked in.

What’s the Body Like On These Binoculars?

The Bushnell PowerView 8×25 Porro Binoculars is coated with a non-slip rubber armor that has plenty of texturing and stippling. Make no mistake, though, these binoculars are pretty tiny. The closed bridge design coupled with the compact size does make these binoculars a bit of a challenge to hold one-handed, but you can still pull it off.

How Durable Are the Binoculars?

The rubber armor on the Bushnell PowerView 8×25 Porro Binoculars provides a good deal of shock absorption, which is essential for any porro prism design. I dropped these binoculars a couple of times, and the set is still perfectly in collimation.

Unfortunately, Bushnell has not bothered to make these binoculars water resistant or fogproof, so they are really only usable during nice weather. Dropping them in water is out of the question, they fog up easily in cold or damp weather, and the problems with the optics make these binoculars almost useless during low light conditions.