More Information Price $299.00 Warranty 1 year

The Meade NightView is a new compact monocular night scope that will change the way you view the world after dark. Meade’s NightView uses state-of-the-art digital imaging technology to give you a crisper and more contrast-rich image than competing models under all low-light conditions.

It uses a Sony high-sensitivity 1/3” NTSC composite monochrome CCD image sensor with a 525 x 420 pixel resolution. The supplied 12mm focal length f/1.2 lens provides a magnification of 1.5x and a full 38° field of view. A built-in digital zoom can increase the magnification to 3x. The lens is fully focusable from infinity to an astonishingly close 3” near focus. The image is displayed at a 400 x 225 pixel resolution through a premium ferroelectric liquid crystal eyepiece viewer to preserve observer stealth. Competing models use a bright LCD display that lights up the user’s face, making him or her visible to anyone or anything looking in the right direction. Hardly what you want when you’re using a night scope for surveillance. Competing LCD displays also seriously impair the viewer’s sensitivity to light, making it difficult to adapt quickly to changing light conditions as you move from viewing a brightly-illuminated subject to one much dimmer.

The sensitivity of the NightView is a very good 0.03 lux with its supplied 12mm f/1.2 lens. (One lux is the brightness of one candle flame spread out over a one meter square area at a distance of one meter. Considering that some flashlights have an output of as much as 800,000 candlepower, you can see that the NightView’s ability to see things at a brightness of only 0.03 lux is the ability to see things that are very faint indeed.)

The NightView has an automatic electronic shutter with exposure times of 1/60th to 1/120,000th of a second. This allows you to use the NightView in the daytime without having to worry about overloading the imaging sensor and damaging it.

For times when there is no light at all, a high-power 14-element infrared illuminator at the front of the scope will light up the target without being detected by the person or creature being observed. The 14 discrete illuminator lenses provide a tightly directed dispersion of invisible IR light on the target that yields a crisper, more refined image compared with the wide spray illumination effect of competing models. The brightness of the IR illuminator is adjustable in 100 steps from 0% to 100% brightness.

The brightness of the ferroelectric liquid crystal display is likewise adjustable in 100 steps from dim to very bright. Both the display brightness and illuminator power settings are automatically stored in memory when the NightView is not in use.

The NightView is powered by six AA batteries (not supplied). A set of batteries will provide up to three hours of continuous use with the illuminator turned on full for operation in conditions approaching total darkness. A supplied AC adapter allows uninterrupted operation. The NightView measures only 7.2” long x 2.2” wide x 2.9” high and has a wrist strap and a rubberized paint finish for a sure grip. At a weight of only 8.8 ounces without batteries, the NightView is easy to handhold and can be operated with one hand. For continuous use surveillance purposes, however, the NightView has a 1/4”-20 thread mounting hole in its underside for mounting the scope on a standard photo tripod. The NightView includes a video-out port that can be quickly connected to a video monitor or camcorder for surveillance purposes.

The NightView can be used as supplied or can be used with any of three supplied color filters that can be dropped into the rubber-rimmed eyepiece. The green filter provides the greatest image contrast and detail. The red filter helps preserve your night vision. The neutral density grey minimizes amount of light coming to your eye when observing bright images. The supplied soft carrying case has three mesh pockets inside for storing the filters when they are not is use.