Just Announced - Leica Geovid Pro 8x32 & 10x32

[Mhopper5]

Mhoper5, Leica had numerous known issues with the Previous Geovids, particlularly the 40034 models. I had one and it wouldn't range anything past about 200 yards when temps got near freezing. Lot's of folks had that issue and it didn't matter if you had a fresh battery in there or not. I understand Leica fixed this issue, especially with the latter models.

JGRaider,
I agree with you. How do I tell what model I have? I put fresh batteries in ever year and have never had any issues. My point on the battery limitations, yes I agree Leica had know issues. From what I understand they changed their technology to work with the limitations of the batteries. Less power hungry electronics. The flaw in their design was assuming full power would be available all the time.

 

[WJAadams]

About damn time with the applied ballistics update.

Tempting to give geovids a 3rd try and hope they aren't turds in cool (not even cold) weather like the previous 2 tries were. Not interested in a 32mm bino for general western hunting though so it'd have to be the 3200 with AB upgrade or wait until they hopefully come out with a 42 pro.

Can you tell me a bit more about your 32mm western concern? I have the same concern but don’t know how valid it is. I would like to hear your opinion as I am also western.

 

[OutdoorAg]

Can you tell me a bit more about your 32mm western concern? I have the same concern but don’t know how valid it is. I would like to hear your opinion as I am also western.

I’m not him, but I hunt big open country in western Texas’ llano uplift. Brushy draw and open field country with dark edge tree lines.

I’ll tell you that when it comes to alpha glass, the 32s make 42s really hard to justify.

50s are a diff animal. But I don’t like carrying that size of glass.

So if I’m going to hunt 42s, the 32s will do just about everything.

 

[wind gypsy]

Can you tell me a bit more about your 32mm western concern? I have the same concern but don’t know how valid it is. I would like to hear your opinion as I am also western.

OutdoorAg and Trial probably have more experience than I with the alpha 32s so take my input with a grain of salt. The 32s i've messed with were just less forgiving of eye placement.

I'm always choosing between taking my 10x42 monarch HG or 12x50 EL. If my intention is to primarily find game behind binos on a tripod and I'm going to be spending hours behind them, I want something that is easy as possible to get behind and bigger objectives make binos less critical of perfect eye position. My hesitation is mainly that I would want 10x, i would be less hesitant about 8x32.

 

[tdhanses]

I think the cold issues were limitations with the battery not the unit themselves. When lithium batteries get cold they can’t give the burst of energy required to run the laser, or at least at full power. I believe the newer pros take this into consideration and don’t have the same power requirements. This is my opinion only and hasn’t been validated .

The unit I had it was a mfg defect, the replacement worked fine.

 

[tdhanses]

JGRaider,
I agree with you. How do I tell what model I have? I put fresh batteries in ever year and have never had any issues. My point on the battery limitations, yes I agree Leica had know issues. From what I understand they changed their technology to work with the limitations of the batteries. Less power hungry electronics. The flaw in their design was assuming full power would be available all the time.

It didn’t effect all, there were a few batches that were incorrectly assembled that created the issue, at least this is what Leica told me when they replaced mine.

Now my replacement is at the Leica factory for the focus failing but they found something else they couldn’t repair state side and they have been shipped to the factory overseas, this one had zero issues ranging in the cold.

 

[wind gypsy]

I think the cold issues were limitations with the battery not the unit themselves. When lithium batteries get cold they can’t give the burst of energy required to run the laser, or at least at full power. I believe the newer pros take this into consideration and don’t have the same power requirements. This is my opinion only and hasn’t been validated .

Lithium batteries perform much better than alkaline in the cold. They aren't impacted nearly as much. With brand new lithium batteries my Geovid HD-B 2000 and the HD-B 2200 they replaced them with both shit the bed before temps reached freezing, when brand new. Spent the better part of a year waiting for warranty replacements between the two if I recall correctly.

I remember hearing something about it being poor soldering on some connections but never really knew the for sure root cause.

 

[tdhanses]

Lithium batteries perform much better than alkaline in the cold. They aren't impacted nearly as much. With brand new lithium batteries my Geovid HD-B 2000 and the HD-B 2200 they replaced them with both shit the bed before temps reached freezing, when brand new. Spend the better part of a year waiting for warranty replacements between the two if I recall correctly.

I remember hearing something about it being poor soldering on some connections but never really knew the for sure root cause.

Yup believe that was the case, poor or incorrectly soldered part.

 

[Trial153]

Yes at this point I don’t see myself ever owning an 8x that isn’t 32mm, from my experience with anything from Conquest HDs up, your giving up little if any performance for the weight and size savings. I haven’t tried any 32mm Leica lately but ELS and SF are flipping fantastic in 8x32. For that matter so were the 8x32 conquest Hds I had.

10x32 I have more limited time behind and they only been ELs, compared them to 10x42 SLC and was really questioning my need for 42mm objectives. I used them both free hand and off a tripod at times. Moose, caribou, big county for elk, plains deer…I really don’t think you can wrong with top tier 10x32s . Now that said I have quantify that a bit. If I didn’t have 12x50 for Couse Deer, open county/desert mule deer and I was forced to have only one higher power binos I think a 42mm 10x makes sense as compromise.

 

[OutdoorAg]

Some new to me photos, pulled from
a bird forum thread about these…

 

[Mhopper5]

Some new to me photos, pulled from
a bird forum thread about these…

Good pictures. This is what we was talking about earlier when I handled a pair. My right index finger has muscle memory of where the button is- goes right to it. On the smaller unit I kept reaching over the bridge. I had to search a bit before I found it. Not a huge deal but it adds delay in the process because I have to think about what I was doing instead of it naturally happening.

Like shooting a full sized pistol all the time then trying your friends micro carry gun. It takes a moment to get set up properly on the bang lever. Just feels weird.

 

[OutdoorAg]

@Mhopper5 yep I can see that.

Button placement is sooooo individual on these RF bins. For example, I found the Zeiss to be a fantastic unit, but the forward button placement was odd. I almost thought of training myself to use my ring finger to hit the button, leaving my index for the focus knob. In the end, I couldn’t get comfortable.

Now, with any piece of equipment you just get use to it. Becomes your new normal. Like going from a turn the key to push button start in a car. Or shifter on the column vs shifter in the center console. After a few thousand miles it is what it is and you do the new thing.

I’ll be interested to see how these Pros handle. My view is that, short of the button being on the focus knob, there is a learning curve to “finding” the button. Is it an inch worming of your index finger. Or a reposition of the hand. Or combo.

In the end, I think that carrying a RF in this size glass might depend on ones comfort level with the ergos. I daily carry the SLC Neu. So that size of bino, which appears identical to these Pros, should hopefully feel natural in hand. TBD…

 

[Steven Hendrickson]

Those look really nice.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Browninglover1]

I got to check these out at the Hunt Expo in SLC yesterday. The two samples they have are pre-production units but the 8x had horrible backlash in the focus knob. It didn't appear to the change the optical focus but you could feel it in your hands and watch it move. Button placement for the rangefinder felt very natural to me, it cycles through the yardage, dial up, and windage correction 2 or 3x before it shuts off. The new Sig and Revic give all that information at the same time on their HUD and it is displayed longer; not a deal killer but worth noting.

The unit syncs very fast with a phone so you can add wind direction or change profiles on your phone and it will sync almost immediately to the bino. You also have the ability to remote range using the app so you can trigger the unit without touching the binos. The unit will also let you input wind in the bino itself, you simply press the secondary button, then the primary button until the wind value is what you want. There is no way to send the wind value down, so you just have to cycle up to the max (50 I think) and then it starts over at 0. You then press the secondary button to move to wind direction and you can use the primary button to cycle around the clock and finish by pressing the secondary button again. You cannot access the wind settings after ranging until the rangefinder shuts back off which I found annoying but the short display time of the range and shooting solution isn't a huge hinderance. The wind values that were manually inputted in the bino were stored and remembered for the time I was at the station, but they did not appear to sync back to the app.


Optically they seemed plenty good but I cannot give them any honest assessment while looking thru them for a few minutes in a convention center. It was weird to adjust the left barrel for the eye diopter setting but was easily set up. Adjusting the diopter for the range display in the right eye was super easy to dial in a good focus on the display. My only real gripe with the binos was the focus knob location as it seemed so far back towards my face it was unnatural to find while using them.

 

[OutdoorAg]

@Browninglover1 thanks! Did you get to handle the 10x any?

 

[Browninglover1]

@Browninglover1 thanks! Did you get to handle the 10x any?

I did. I really wish I could have spent some time with both of the specimens in a different setting or at least had some other binos to compare them against. They said production samples are arriving in April and 30-40 are arriving this month to go out to writers. Hopefully a few real writers/reviewers get ahold of them instead of the usual magazine authors that just don't seem to have a clue what most of us want to know about.

 

[OutdoorAg]

I did. I really wish I could have spent some time with both of the specimens in a different setting or at least had some other binos to compare them against. They said production samples are arriving in April and 30-40 are arriving this month to go out to writers. Hopefully a few real writers/reviewers get ahold of them instead of the usual magazine authors that just don't seem to have a clue what most of us want to know about.

Thanks. I too am curious as how the 10x will stand up to a good optics testing, ease of use, eye placement, etc.

I’ve had one poor experience with x32 binos and blackouts, so I’m hoping for good easing viewing with the Pros.

 

[Browninglover1]

Thanks. I too am curious as how the 10x will stand up to a good optics testing, ease of use, eye placement, etc.

I’ve had one poor experience with x32 binos and blackouts, so I’m hoping for good easing viewing with the Pros.

I didn't notice any blackouts with the 10x32 I just didn't feel there was "wow" factor.

 

[mike175gr]

I placed an order for a pair back in early March. Has anybody received a set yet? Are they shipping?

 

[gr8fuldoug]

I placed an order for a pair back in early March. Has anybody received a set yet? Are they shipping?

Leica feels they are still on track for end of April arrival