SVBony sent me a SV28 70mm scope after seeing my review of the 50mm SV28. The model they sent me wasn’t pre-inspected as it had some minor defects in the alignment and assembly of the sunshade and a bump in the action of the focus knob when focusing at 50mm objects at 45x.
Despite these defects, the overall resolution and sharpness were good for a budget spotting scope. There was good sharpness from edge to edge. It was able to resolve lines down to Element 6 in Group -1 at 100yrds using the USAF 1951 resolution chart.
A street price of about $60 makes this a good value. Be sure to keep your receipt.
Celestron is probably the biggest brand in consumer astronomy telescopes. They also make a varied line of terrestrial spotting scopes and binoculars. I wanted to see if Celestron’s Landscout 10-30×50 lived up to its brand reputation.
The most striking thing about the Landscout 50 is its compact size. It is the smallest 50mm spotting scope I’ve yet tested. My Bushnell Spacemaster is slightly shorter but only when compressed into its telescoping body. The Landscout 50 looks even smaller.
Notable among the competition is its ring mount which allows the eyepiece to be repositioned to allow use both on a tripod base, wall mount, or hanging from a roof mount.
Despite its small size optically, it performed big. Despite its BK7 prism, the view through the scope was bright. It produced no noticeable chromatic aberration at maximum magnification. Its resolution and sharpness were only middle-of-the-pack; not quite as sharp as an equivalent GoSky or SVBony 50mm.
It is sharp enough to use as a range spotter for 22LR at 100yrds. But it only offers 30x magnification, which is slightly less than competitive brands that offer 36x or 40x. That means your eyesight will be doing some of the heavy lifting to make out those .22 holes on paper.
At a $70-$80 price point, I consider this a good value. The compact size sold me. It’s small enough to fit inside an ammo can, field coat pocket, or even cram into a full range bag.
One significant footnote: the first time I ordered this scope from Amazon, I got a lemon that had problems with the inner lenses that were misaligned (it would not focus). I returned it and ordered a second one which is used in this review. While Celestron is a very well-known brand, it’s always important to inspect your purchases no matter who makes them.
The Blackbird is a small, light-weight, 50mm spotting scope from a brand I’d never heard of before. I had seen it come up in my Amazon “suggestions” when I started this series of episodes reviewing various 50mm spotting scopes for 22LR range use but on the surface it seemed to me to be yet another Chinese Off-Brand scope. But Maria Freed, a Subscriber to my YouTube channel, posted a comment suggesting I check out the Blackbird.
The Blackbird is small for a 50mm scope. Not quite as small as the Celestron Landscout but still small. It also had the best external features I like in other spotting scopes:
Captured lens caps so you can’t lose them (both front and back!)
Rear pop-up eyecup
Magnification ring turns independently of the eye-piece.
The optics are bright due to the PAK4 prism, but I found in the 100yrd range test, it was not as sharp or detailed as comparably priced scopes (save for the terrible Barska Colorado) with noticeable distortion on the edges of the image. When enter focused at the USAF resolution chart it managed to resolve down to element 6 in the -2 group, placing it near the bottom of previously reviewed 50mm scopes in terms of resolution and sharpness.
It runs about $70-$80 which is cheaper than an Orion but about $10-$15 more than the SVBony S28 which has slightly sharper image resolution. It’s still a bit better in color and brightness, so this scope may be a better choice for bird watching.
In a previous episode, bought and reviewed a Blavor 10,000mAh Solar power bank. Like similar products, it has a built-in solar panel to allow the unit to charge using sunlight. But I wondered just how many days would it take to fully recharge a unit using sunlight alone? I sought to find out.
I fully discharged my unit and left it on my windowsill and checked it daily. I was shocked to discover that after 30 days the unit was still only half-charged. I ended my first video at this point and continued the experiment. After 30 more days, here is the result.
iJoy Logo Bluetooth Headphones sell for less than $20 on Amazon. I tested their quality and sound and was pleasantly surprised that they weren’t bad, once you change the default EQ setting to something less bass focused. It offers a range of features including a built-in FM radio receiver, a Micro-SD port for playing MP3s, and the option for wired operation with a supplied 3.5mm audio patch cable. It suffers from an opaque user interface that doesn’t provide sufficient cues to its status or settings and a poorly thought through user experience.
PRO • Good sound quality (in the FLAT EQ setting) • MP3 player • FM Radio • 3.5mm wired audio option • Confortable padding • Folding headband • Inexpensive
CON • Poor documentation • Unclear which EQ setting is selected • EQ reset to default when powered down • Inserting 3.5mm audio cable turns off headphone
If you were thinking of using one of these to recharge your devices while traveling off the grid, it takes longer than I expected. I’m going to continue testing this and post periodic videos until I find out.
I own a suite of backup power storage at home and emergency solar and gas-powered generators, so that’s not what this is for. This is more for EDC. I occasionally need to quickly recharge my phone when I forgot to charge it overnight or have a lot of apps use for work, games, etc. These power banks are handy.
Some folks leave these solar power banks on their car dashboard to recharge (I don’t because I live in San Francisco where they’ll break into your car to steal sunglasses). I wanted to see just how long it takes to recharge one of these if left in a window?
I knew it would take more than a few days because the built-in solar panel isn’t that large. But it took even longer than I expected (I wouldn’t have been surprised if I did some more math on the square inches of the panel and the capacity of the battery, whatever).
Despite this, I’m not going to nock this power bank. It works as advertised, offers a pair of LED flashlight heads (“two is one” right?), has a good variety of charging ports, and offers wireless charging so you don’t even need to worry about a cable (provided your phone or device does wireless charging).
PRO • +10,000mAh output fully charged • USBA & USB-C input and output ports • Wireless Qi charging • 2 x LED lights (~200 lumen) • Built in solar panel • Water resistant • Ruberized armored body • Good value at $30 ( AMAZON: https://amzn.to/3jyTSyI )
Comsoon J25 Bluetooth Receiver easily and cheaply allows you to add Bluetooth audio to your old wired headphones or earbuds or your car through its AUX audio port.
The WL25 is Feyachi’s newest 1200 lumen weapon light. It has a premium pressure plate with momentary and constant-on buttons which comes with adapter plates that fix it to either Picatinny or M-Lok rail. Unfortunately, my model would not switch from Strobe/Alt to Low/Alt modes, despite my following the instructions. Despite this, I still found it to be Feyachi’s best-made tac light
As an aside, I had to upload this to YouTube 3 times. The first two times, YouTube’s staff flagged the video as being Advertiser Unfriendly. The first video: due to my showing how to install it on my rifle (which I showed was safely unloaded). The second video: because I still showed the light mounted to my rifle. We are living in an insane nanny culture.
If you’re looking for a good cheap long-range spotter, don’t bother watching. This is a “dumpster diving” review of a budget spotter I’m only using for 50yrd pistol matches or 100yrd rifle matches. In this case, size and weight are key deciding factors.
The 13-40×50 GoSky is one of the best rated compact spotting scopes on Amazon (which doesn’t mean much since most of those reviews are fake or underinformed). It retails for about $99 but I purchased it on sale for $70 putting it closer in price to a SvBony SV28. Making this the best spotter I’ve tried that currently retails for under $100.
PRO
Well built eye-piece with an independent rotating zoom dial.
Good to Great optical clarity for a sub $100 “budget” spotting scope
Nice geared tripod that works better than it looks
SVbony is one of the bigger brands in budget-to-midrange astronomy optics, so I wanted to see if any of that telescope expertise made it down to their least expensive spotting scope, the SV28.
The optic clarity is in the top 5 for 50mm scopes and for a $60 scope, I suppose it’s actually pretty good. But the image is noticeable chromatic aberrations at high magnification. Personally, if your budget is $60, I’d recommend saving a bit more and buying an Orion or GoSky.
