http://www.dx.com/p/mini-10-x-42-waterp ... mpaign=fox
When it arrived I was quite shocked, it was certainly more impressive than I was expecting. This is what you get in the box...
First impressions were that it seemed well made and should stick a bit of abuse. It's so simple to use as there's just a focus knob and a rotating eye cup extender. It was the view through the mono that most impressed me though. When I first looked through it I thought it gave a brilliant picture, I was quite shocked. I usually use Leica range finding bino's but they were getting a hammering throwing them between vehicles and tractors so this mono was really showing it's appeal. Compared to the Leica you can see a slight difference in the pic but without a direct comparison you certainly wouldn't think the DX mono was inferior as the image is very decent. Here's a pic through them but just holding my phone to the eye piece so not really a true representative pic. The tree is over 700yrds away and obviously the view through the actual eye piece is much clearer.
Here's one showing the size compared to my bino's..
Size wise they are not small enough to leave in your pocket day in day out but totally comfortable and hardly noticeable in your pocket if you're out and likely to use them. I found the ability to just draw them from your pocket instead of raising the gun to look through the scope to check something very beneficial. As for just throwing them in the glove box they are brilliant. They're so small they also fit easily in a quad storage box too so will be very handy for me as that's where they will be kept. I often find myself driving to check things out but having it on the bike at all times will be great as I'll just be able to zoom in from where I am. The other thing I found was they seemed to cope quite well at dusk although I haven't directly compared them side by side yet. It seems robust and I'm sure they'll last but I haven't had the nerve to drop them in a stream to check the waterproofness of them yet but at least it's reassuring with the amount of rain we get that they'll be up to the job.
To sum up, if anyone's looking for that extra zoom and thinking about something small & relatively cheap to leave in the truck/gun bag etc and not break the bank if lost, this mono is definitely worth checking out. I like decent glass but in all honesty this thing does what it sais on the tin amicably, I'm very pleased with it so thought I'd recommend it in case anyone was in a similar position to myself..
