Celestron Oceana 7x50 Porro WP CF & RC Binocular, Black

 (13 customer reviews)

A close crossing with an inbound ship on the outbound side of the shipping lanes (and a mile outside of the wrong lane to boot) reminded me that it isn't enough to know where you are, and assume ships will stay in their designated lanes. Not only do you need to see them clearly from a distance, you need an accurate bearing to detect potential collision course. It was this incident that drove my decision to buy this piece of safety equipment without delay.

I was very impressed when I took these glasses out of the box, they have a solid, high-quality look and feel -- from the optics (clarity is awesome) and adjustments, all the way down to the case they come with (padded, solid closure, orange trim for visibility at night.)

Perhaps the feature that lets the Celestron Oceana stand toe-to-toe with much more expensive models, is the quality of its built-in bearing compass. Liquid dampening is a must, out on the ocean, without this a compass is nearly useless...Read more

These binoculars offer a great combination of features for the price. The built-in compass is a very valuable on the water, and the backlighting works very nicely in the dark. Eyepiece adjustments worked very well for me and produced crisp viewing. The rangefinder scale is easy to use and may come in handy.

I am very happy that I bought this binocular; I bought it for our first charter trip and the binoculars provided with the boat were really bad. Compared to those, these were shining. I think they were also much better than the Bushnell 7X50 we had during sailing school. Actually with these it was the first time I could enjoy watching the world through a pair of binoculars. The image is clear and very bright. It doesn't seem to lose any brightness at all. They are not very heavy, if you hold them in a position with your arms close to your chest to provide more support you can use them for quite a while.

Now, the bad - they are not extremely well built; the rings around the lenses are stuck with some very cheap glue and they almost came off in only a week of using it. This doesn't have any effect on the optical quality, but still; I hope that the inside is built somewhat stronger, otherwise I will have to replace them too soon.
They have separate focus adjustments for...Read more