6 Best Binoculars Under $100: Budget Friendly Options

While most of us live and die by the phrase “buy once, cry once” sometimes you just need something cheap that will get the job done.

Be it because you’ve bought once and cried once too hard on the rest of your gear or be it because you just don’t want to invest rent money into this year’s hunt, here are the best binoculars under $100!

Best Binoculars Under $100

1. Bushnell Powerview 2 8x21mm		Ultra-compact Lightweight Great for casual viewing	Check Price
2. Bushnell Falcon 10x50mm		Good glass clarity Easy to hold Super cheap	Check Price
3. Celestron Outland X 10x42mm		Great glass for low price Short minimum focus Very accessible	Check Price
4. Vortex Vanquish 10x26mm		Best in class warranty Good glass Lightweight	Check Price
5. Leupold BX-1 Rogue 10x25mm		Cool design look Better than average edge-to-edge clarity Affordable	Check Price
6. Nikon Aculon A30 10x25mm		Super lightweight Better than expected glass quality Very clear center of focus	Check Price

Best Binoculars Under $100

1. Bushnell Powerview 2 8x21mm
2. Bushnell Falcon 10x50mm
3. Celestron Outland X 10x42mm
4. Vortex Vanquish 10x26mm
5. Leupold BX-1 Rogue 10x25mm
6. Nikon Aculon A30 10x25mm

Best Binoculars Under $100 Specifications

Below is a list of our Best Binoculars Under $100. So we can compare and line up the specs from each of the products and help you make the best decision possible.

Best Binoculars Under $100 Reviews

Now that we’ve run through the overview and looked at our list, let’s take the time to individually review each item. In this section we’ll be revisiting our specs, speaking about the product, and looking at the pros and cons.

Best Binoculars Under $100 – Buyers Guide

Just so we’re all on the same page, binoculars are basically two telescopes strapped together. That’s more or less it. Focus and diopter adjustments are normally included also, but a lot of cheaper models don’t have diopter adjustments.

The biggest advantage that binoculars give you is a field of view and depth of field. 

Humans have two eyes (mostly) and we use those two eyes to get two slightly different pictures of what we’re looking at.

Our brain takes those two images and through some brain magic, combines them into one image. The differences between those images help us judge the depth of field, basically how far away things are.

Riflescopes, spotting scopes, and monoculars rob us of that fundamental biological asset. Binoculars allow us to use our vision to the max.

Depth of field makes spotting and tracking shots easier, judging range more accurate, and finding animals faster.

Binoculars are also, generally, much more comfortable to use for long periods of time. 

When To Use Binoculars

Personally, I think we should be using binoculars a lot more than most of the shooting community does right now.

There is a lot of room for personal preferences, but almost all of the people that I introduce to binoculars eventually decide to ditch their spotting scopes or at least augment them with a pair of good binos.

Binos are great for spotting game, spotting rifle shots, calling hits and misses on steel, and teaching yourself how to estimate range more accurately — although for that you should have a laser rangefinder with you also.

Bottom line, other than actually shooting a rifle, binos are great for just about everything a shooter needs to do.

The only thing spotting scopes do better than binos is pure magnification. It’s rare to use binos over 15x while spotting scopes are often found in 45x, 60x, and even 80x.

If you want to spot on paper targets or need to see a very long distance, a spotting scope might be more helpful.

That said, I use 15x56mm binos to spot hits and misses at competitions out to 1,000 yards on steel.

Important Parts & Names

Magnification and Objective Lens – are the numbers you see when you see something like “10×42” or “8×50”. The first number is the magnification and the second is the size of the objective lens in millimeters. 

So a 10×42 magnifies the image 10 times and has a 42mm objective lens.

The magnification is pretty straightforward, that is simply how much closer something will look. A target at 100 yards looked at with a 10x set of binos will look like it is 10 yards away. Or will look ten times as large as it is at 100. Same difference.

The Objective Lens – is the larger of the two lenses, it’s NOT the lens you put up to your face to look through. Size matters a lot when it comes to the objective lens because the larger it is the more light it can capture.

More light means a brighter image and is easier to see during lower light times like twilight.

A smaller objective lens will make for a darker picture and make it so that you simply can’t see things well when the light starts to fade.

If you’re only using your binos during the bright part of the day, a small objective lens is fine. But in the dawn and evening, smaller objective lenses will start to fail you.

Glass Coating – is where most of the innovations in optics are these days. Coatings make a huge difference in clarity, durability, and light transmission. 

The only problem is that coatings are often proprietary and the words used to describe those coatings are entirely made up by the marketing departments of whatever company made the optic.

Most commonly you’ll see “multi-coated” as the buzzword that is thrown around. What that means is a bit of a guessing game, however, generally, it means that there are coatings for at least anti-reflection, scratch-resistant, water repellent, and UV. 

It might include other coatings such as blue filters to reduce blue light but what may or may not be used is anyone’s guess.

It is better to buy optics that have coatings than ones that don’t but finding ones that don’t is pretty hard.

Glass Quality – is normally referring to three things that work together — clarity, brightness, and color.

Coatings on the glass will affect these dramatically, but the quality of the glass itself is still the most important part of the puzzle.

Now when you’re looking at binos that are all under $100, honestly the glass quality won’t be amazing. They’ve come a long way over the years, but this is still the cheap stuff.

Even within the cheap stuff, we can see major differences though.

Clarity – is how clear an image is. The haze at the edge of the glass is often the most telling part of clarity.

Brightness – is not only how bright something looks but also the amount of light that is transmitted. More light = more bright and able to see with less light available, such as dawn and dusk.

Color – is how true the colors are. A lot of cheap glass will introduce false colors like purples and greens into what you’re looking at, especially around the edges of objects. If you’re just calling hits and misses, this isn’t a big deal. But for spotting game or bird watching it can be very annoying.

Exit Pupil – is the diameter of light that is exiting the binoculars, this is the light that you are looking at when looking through binos.

The size of the exit pupil mechanically determines how much light can reach your eye. Small exit pupils allow less light, larger ones allow more.

Basically, bigger is better — normally.

Human pupils are normally 2-4mm in daylight and 4-8mm when fully dilated. If you’re only using your binos in the daylight when your pupil is physically only 2 or 3mm then using binos with an exit pupil of 2.3mm is going to work well.

However, the earlier or later in the day you want to use those binos the more important a larger exit pupil will become.

Twilight Factor – is an old-school method of measuring how well optics work in the twilight. You multiply the magnification by the objective lens size and find the square root of that number.

How did they come up with this method? I have no idea. But that’s what we got.

That said — this number is more or less kind of useless these days. This method of quantifying how optics worked in the twilight was developed before most of the coatings that we use now. Since coatings radically change how well optics work in the twilight, they basically made this method obsolete. Or at least made it so that it doesn’t remotely tell you the full story.

It is not uncommon for an optic with a lower twilight number to do better in the twilight than an optic with a higher number if the optic with the lower number uses better glass and better coatings.

The twilight factor is, at best, a ballpark. You should not use it as the definitive answer to what is better.

Why did I include it? Because some people still want to use it and still want to know about it. I don’t recommend it, but I included it.

Roof Vs. Porro Prism – is a big choice… if you’re looking at high-end binos. Honestly, at this price level, the difference between the type of prism used is so minor that you might as well ignore it.

But just for education’s sake, I’ll give you the rundown on what it means.

Prisms are pieces of glass that the light travels through after passing through the objective lens and before being focused on the exit pupil.

Traveling through prisms and how the prisms work is what makes the light do the things you want it to do, like give a magnified image, brighten it, see it in the right orientation, and keep it clear.

Porro prisms are the oldest type for binos and use a zig-zag pattern to reflect the light. Binos with Porro prisms are easy to recognize because there will be a large step in their housing.

These are very easy to manufacture so they tend to be cheaper. But they are also bulkier and a little more prone to getting damaged.

Mechanically, they can result in a better 3D image and a wider field of view.

Roof prisms are more streamlined, but actually more complex to make. They don’t require the zig-zag that Porro prisms do so Roof prism binos can be made smaller, more compact, and lighter weight.

The upsides, other than being smaller and lighter, is that Roof prisms can give a brighter image and allow for higher magnification.

Minimum Focus – is simply how close you can focus on. 13 feet means an object 13 feet away from you can be brought into focus. 24 feet means the shortest distance the binos can focus is 24 feet. This one is pretty straightforward.

For shooting, this number isn’t important since no one is using binos to spot hits at 10 feet.

But if you want to use these for some bird watching or something, this number might matter to you.

What Matters To You

For the hunter and target shooter, there are three things that make or break binoculars for us. Durability, clarity, and brightness.

How much of each you need or what is more important to you depends on you and your goals.

Personally, I want them in that order — durable, clear, and bright.

If it isn’t durable I’ll break it before I can get value out of it.

I want clarity so that I can actually make out the detail of what I’m looking at. Fuzzy bullet holes aren’t good enough. Being able to count points on a buck requires that I can see the points to start with.

Brightness means I can use it more in the twilight, but since I live in California I got a ton of sun all of the time so my world tends to be on a higher brightness setting than most others.

If you live in an area that is overcast often or you need to go deeper into the twilight, brightness might be more important to you.

You Get What You Pay For

As with most things in life, you really get what you pay for when it comes to optics. When you get into the high-end stuff a lot of money is needed to move the quality up by fractions of an amount, but down here in the cheap stuff, a little bit of money goes a long way.

Down here, you’re getting a lot more for every dollar added than anywhere else.

A $20 set of binos Vs. a $40 set of binos, the $40 ones while costing twice as much might be 3 or 4 times as good as the $20 set.

That isn’t to say that you need the $40 set, just that you’re much more likely to get a product that is actually a lot better.

Since you’re here looking for cheap binos, I’m guessing that cost is the primary driver of your choice. That said, if you can go for the “higher-end” of this price range, you’ll thank yourself later.