Review: Vortex 6.5x32 Fury
03/23/2008
The Vortex 6.5x32 Fury: A Mid-Priced Binocular To Love
While I strongly advocate teaching self-reliance by spending your kid’s tuition money on alpha class binoculars, I must admit that there are more and more astonishingly good binoculars at a fraction of the cost of their alpha-class cousins. I am pretty tough to please. I want a very bright image. A wide field of view. I want binoculars that are comfortable to use with eyeglasses. They have to be water-proof. They have to be pleasing to hold. Focusing has to be quick. I don’t want to miss birds because I can’t focus fast enough. My index finger has to find the focus wheel without searching for it. I am sensitive to chromatic aberration and can’t stand to see color-fringing in the middle of the field. I want colors to look the way they are supposed to look.
These requirements add up to a tall order for any binocular manufacturer. Even some very expensive glasses don’t get it all right. That the folks at Vortex can put this all together in a package that costs $300 is remarkable.
My first impression on opening the box was “OOOOOO. These feel really good.” After putting them through their paces with a test target and a full day of birding I am even more impressed.
Heft and Feel
The Vortex Fury is so comfortable in hand that they are really hard to put down. You instantly bond with them. The green rubber armor extends up over the strap lugs, which keeps the lugs from chafing your hands. I especially like this design in a mid-sized binocular because you just can’t avoid putting your hands over the lugs. I prefer the feel of the slight swelling of the armor over the lugs to the thumb rests on most binoculars. The outsized focus wheel rotates 1 ¼ turns, and falls very comfortably under my index finger. The eyecups are comfortable and screw in and out with one intermediate stop. I would like to see the designers add an additional stop closer to the fully retracted position to help eyeglass wearers deal with image blackout.
Weighing in at 22 ounces, they are light enough to wear around your neck all day.
This model has 16mm of eye relief which allowed me to see most of the field while wearing eyeglasses.
The diopter adjustment is located in the focus wheel – a design that is increasingly popular with more expensive binoculars.
These binoculars focus down to 4.9 feet, which makes them well suited for butterfly and dragonfly watching.
Image Quality
The first impression you get is that these bins are incredibly bright. Not quite up there with Zeiss and Leica, but they seem to me to be about as bright as the Swarovski ELs. With a panoramic (445 feet at 1,000 yards) field of view it is a snap to pick up fast moving birds in flight and to keep them in the binocular field.
The field is quite flat and natural looking. Parallel lines stay parallel throughout most of the field. There is some chromatic aberration toward the outer third of the field, but I was not able to detect any in the center. I have seen more chromatic aberration in glasses costing quite a bit more. Although there seems to be a slight bias toward the warm end of the spectrum, the color rendition is quite accurate and natural looking.
These bins, like other low magnification models, provide great depth of focus. This means that you have to make fewer focus adjustments to keep a moving bird sharply in focus.
Summary
I passed the Vortex 6.5x32 around among several birding friends during a day of birding without telling anyone the price. My testers had hands ranging from quite small to fairly large and all found these to be very comfortable to use. The reaction was uniformly enthusiastic. Nobody could believe that they were looking through a mid-sized binocular with only a 6.5x magnification. Perhaps the last word should go to my wife, Holly, who said (almost apologetically) that if she lost her Swarovskis, she might be quite content to spend her days birding with the Vortex 6.5x32. Indeed. You could happily spend $300 on these and blow the rest on a birding trip.
These bins are a best buy and should be at the top of the list for anyone looking for mid-priced binoculars. Vortex also makes a full-sized version of the Fury which I will review in a later posting.
The Vortex Fury 6.5x32 is a mid-sized, mid-priced binocular that you can love.
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Great review
One aspect not covered concerns reliability and durability. These bins passed both tests as they were subjected to driving rain, extremes of temperature, many forceful knocks and a great deal of dirt and bug repellent. Their construction is solid. used stationary bikes
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Well, I am not an expert in
Well, I am not an expert in this field, but I may introduce it to my friends....
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Vortex 6.5x32 Fury binoculars
Thanks for this review of a pair of excellent bins. I can only 100% agree. I actually purchased my pair before reading this review.
It should be added that they are great for Pelagics. The low magnification with the extreme brightness and wide angle field of view, makes them excellent to use at sea under shaky conditions and overcast poor light.
I am so pleased with Vortex binocular, that I started importing them to Peru. I wrote <a href="http://www.kolibriexpeditions.com/birdingperu/blog/index.php/high-quality-vortex-binoculars-now-available-in-peru/"> a blog about how I started importing Vortex binoculars to Peru</a>. Check it out <a HREF="http://www.kolibriexpeditions.com/birdingperu/blog/index.php/high-quality-vortex-binoculars-now-available-in-peru/">here</a>.
Gunnar Engblom
Lima, Peru
Kolibri Expeditions
www.kolibriexpeditions.com
Wayne Mones Thank you for
Wayne Mones
Thank you for your comment. It is always good to hear from birders who are using the binoculars we review.
I may get one for my wife,
I may get one for my wife, because of it's ease of use, with and without glasses, which she uses or doesn't use as the spirit moves her. I can compare it to my Eagle 6 x 32 Platinum and to my Leica Trinovid 7 x 42, and to my 6 x 30 Yosemite, if I can ever get it back from my brother!
Vortex
Regarding your wife's on-again, off-again use of eyeglasses while using binoculars, I suggest that she make a decision to always bird with her glasses or without them rather than switching back and forth. In my experience, people who can't decide whether or not to use their eyeglasses mostly see better with glasses, but tend to have binoculars which don't allow them to see the edges of the field with their glasses on. The Vortex should allow your wife to see most of the field while wearing her glasses.
Vortex 6.5x32 experience
I was gifted my Vortex Fury 6.5x32 bins about 6 weeks ago, and field tested them several times, including a week's birding trip to Central America. I agree with most observations stated in Mr. Mones review. In bright open areas, the bins meet the stringent birding requirements, even with their reduced 6.5x magnification. I can recall no instance where a higher power would have enhanced identification or enjoyment. Since most of my birding involves a great deal of hiking for many hours, their light weight and lower power definitely reduces overall fatigue.
One aspect not covered concerns reliability and durability. These bins passed both tests as they were subjected to driving rain, extremes of temperature, many forceful knocks and a great deal of dirt and bug repellent. Their construction is solid.
The Vortex bins performed particularly well in low light forest conditions, where their wide field of view and great depth of field helped me quickly zero in on some understory birds that permitted only seconds to make an identification before silently vanishing into the gloom. Their brightness in these conditions was superb.
When wearing glasses, I experienced occasional blackouts. Slipping o-rings over the retractable eye cups to sandwich them between the eye cups and vortex body resolved the issue. Later, I realized the eye cups remain well in place even when not positioned at a stop.
Unlike Mr. Mones, I could not produce any chromatic aberrations until about the outer 10% or so of the field, and have not observed color distortions any time while birding. The Fury's do show a moderate amount of pin-cushioning toward the edges, which, according to some reviewers, is a direct relationship to the depth of field. Many perceived optical discrepancies can be attributed to individual eye anomalies and product sampling.
Overall, the Vortex Fury 6.5x32 perform marvelously for a $300 binocular, and if purchased, will certainly be carried often into the field.