Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Optics Review of Minox Marine Binocular BN 7x50 DC

Chris and Doug at Pelagic Outfitters told me these were worth looking at for a dedicated boat binocular and I had to agree. I have had them now for almost two months and used them on a boat-based caribou hunt, several vehicle-based black bear hunts, several weeks on saltwater trips from Kodiak and Prince William Sound, and a bunch of just kicking around and looking.



My experience with Minox goes back about 6 years as I bought Riley a HG 8.5x43 as his first good glass. It has performed flawlessly for him. Miss T got a HG 10x43 shortly after and both are completely happy with them for their uses. Riley continues to prefer the 8x, BTW.

For comparison glass I used my '80 vintage 10x40 Zeiss ClassiC, a Minox German BL 15x56 I got from Doug about 18 months ago, the aforementioned Minox bins and an assortment of other stuff that pretty much became meaningless after the first few peeks.

There have been other Minox binoculars and scopes that have come and some are gone, so I was not surprised at the "WOW!" factor in the glass. I have been a little surprised at how universal the WOW continues to be when folks look through them for the first time. Adding the bearing and tilt functions while they are looking through them is usually good for a dropped jaw.

They are big glass and they are really steady on a bobbing boat... That is a very good thing in a boat bin! These will never see a goat hunt, though! Except, of course, from the water side.

Even compared to the German BL 15x56 these are a serious handful.





While glassing near the Sterling/Seward Hiway Y there were a number of goats in the rocks at the cloud line and friends from North Dakota could not make them out. Handing them the big glass and telling them the bearing and tilt allowed them to concentrate in exactly the right spot and make out the goats easily.

I laminated a small chart of Sines, cosines, and tangents and hope to remember enough basic algebra to use it if presented with a need to calculate a rough distance on a hillside.

As noted earlier the ability to give a heading is handy. While pulling shrimp pots in Prince William Sound I was able to give the helm a heading once the buoy was spotted without having to use points on the beach, or waiting for a flock of birds to cross the spot.

One evening in the Kodiak harbor I set up several targets in the open, close in, and a bottle well up under a dock. The plan was to use the 15x56, 10x40 Zeiss, and the Minox 7x50 to see which held up the longest as it grew dark. Of course dark is a long time coming in July... The bottle under the dock very clearly showed the superiority of the 7x50 for low light, but the other glass performed equally well on the open and shadowed targets.

Little things like the extra set of roll-down eyecups in case you prefer them to the detented twist-ups is a very nice touch. Both of the cups worked very well and I ended up putting the screw-out version back on just because I found them easier to move back and forth when going from glasses to naked eyes.

For a boat binocular it would be hard to match the BN 7x50 DC for what it brings to the table. If you are looking for a great vehicle binocular these would also be worth a look. The wide padded neoprene strap is needed for a glass of this size but it is not likely to be carried for a long day and I passed on getting an aftermarket strap system.
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