Black Friday - thinking of monoculars

[Tan usa1]

Any budget friendly monocular for planets and terrestrial use? Something not too heavy but can be used handheld or on a photo tripod. 

But good magnification and about  70-80mm aperture?

Suggestions? 

[John Pierce]

On Thu, Nov 27, 2025 at 6:32 PM Tan usa1 <tanveer...@gmail.com> wrote:

Any budget friendly monocular for planets and terrestrial use? Something not too heavy but can be used handheld or on a photo tripod. 

But good magnification and about  70-80mm aperture?

for handheld/portable use I really like my 

Opticron Explorer WA ED-R 8x42 Monocular

   but it has no tripod screw. What it does have is a nice 60 degree apparent FOV and good eye relief for us eyeglass wearers, a flat field edge to edge with no visible chromatic aberration, and decent coatings so you get a nice high contrast image.   Its quite compact at 5.4" long and 2" diameter, and weighs about 11 ounces.   The focus collar is quite stiff so it stays where you put it, and doesn't accidently lose focus from handling.   its nitrogen filled and waterproof so wet weather doesn't ruin it.

70-80mm aperture, you're getting into spotting scopes.     last time I went looking for decent affordable spotting scopes, I was quite dismayed that *everything* had zoom lenses with relatively narrow FOV at the lower end of the magnification range.