Hiking

The best compact binoculars for hiking are the ones that disappear into your daypack and still give you a bright, steady image of the ridgeline two valleys over. That sounds simple, but the shelf is crowded with palm-sized 8x25s, 10x26s, and 12x25s that all claim the same thing. I carried a stack of them over … Read more

A monocular is a single-barrel telescope that magnifies a distant subject through one eye. It weighs roughly half of a binocular pair, slides into a jacket pocket, and reaches your eye in about a second, which is why so many hikers carry one instead of two objectives and a chest strap. We spent six weeks … Read more