Barska Gladiator 25-75x100 Waterproof Straight Spotting Scope w/Tripod: Customer Reviews & Product Details

NOT a field scope, more a living room scope, but excellent for that purpose. Focus and zoom controls are easy, precise and smooth. Optical performance: clear, sharp and bright at all magnifications, and with much less loss of sharpness and light than with other zoom scopes I have tried; eye relief is wonderful for eyeglass wearers, and with a bad astigmatism I am particularly sensitive to this; spherical aberration is excellent, almost absent; chromatic aberration is apparent in very bright conditions at about 50x if the eyepiece moves relative to your eye, but if the scope is held steady it is very acceptable. Construction seems solid, although not sufficiently so for the outdoors. Again I would never attempt to use this heavy scope in the field, and that is purely because of its weight (it has a huge objective lens, which is why I bought it), and the magnification level which means you must have it very steady (this would be true of a $2000 scope of this power too). If this had been a $2000 scope, then it might have gained only 3 or 4 stars from me, but for $240 from Amazon it fully deserves 5 stars. The tripod: NEVER use it for this scope, although it's fine for a much lighter scope. I have an old Velbon tripod that is very solid, and works just fine, but you MUST be careful when using this scope with any tripod, and that is purely because of the weight. Not clamping the vertical axis control will likely lead to it crashing down against the tripod. For that reason I would also suggest that this scope is only suitable for adult use. I would recommend acquiring a tripod with ball bearings on the horizontal axis, which means a more expensive tripod, but I do not believe that a tripod without ball bearings would be usable with this scope's weight. Barska have apparently addressed the problem of not having the tripod adapter at the equilibrium point by adding an extra plastic distance piece that moves the swing point forward. The plastic piece appears delicate, so another reason not to use the scope in the field, or to carry it around a lot. Finally, if you want a permanent, high power observation scope for your living room window or veranda, with brilliant performance under low light conditions, this is for you. If you want a field scope, or one for pre-teens to use, look elsewhere.

I recently received this scope from [...] and immediately took it out to test it. Upon choosing a target and a magnification I attempted to focus the zoom and ended up breaking the nob off of the scope. Upon investigation it looked like the zoom focus was glued against the adjustment axle, instead of bolted, or made a single piece. To say the least I was amazed of how quickly this product broke, I hope this was a manufacturing defect and not the norm. Either way I will not be purchasing items from this manufacturer again, opticsale has offered to replace it... we will see how that goes.

I purchased this product online at Amazon on October 8th as a Christmas gift for my husband. It is the above Barska Spotting scope. It arrived in reasonable time and showed no signs of damage. It was given to my husband on Christmas Day where we were disappointed to see that the eye piece was completely broken off. Not the glass part, but the plastic that surrounded it, making it unusable. We wrote to Amazon immediately, wanting to exchange the broken one for a new one. The only response I got was that I was past the date of returns and therefore would have to pay for shipping back, half the original cost of the scope or buy a brand new one and they would reimburse me for whatever amount they thought apporpriate. This was quite a surprise considering the $1000.00's of dollars I have spent with Amazon over the years. It was a Christmas gift and I had no reason to think I should open it, knowing full well that many items (C.D.'c, DVD's, Books etc.) are not returnable if opened. Is there any other result we can expect that replaces an unusuable scope with one that works? I spent many hours researching scopes and this was the one I had chosen. Any help would be appreciated.

Sincerely, Karen Glenn

We have a lot of Deer around my town and Eagles.While I have a pair of Glasses 10X50 they still are a bit away from us.So I purchased these hoping to bring them in closer,it sure does,I can not say enough about the extra light at dusk they bring in, the Deer look very nice at this range....This Scope is very heavy,you will need a good tripod to rest it on.The dinky one it comes with just will not handle it.

I guess I'll start with the nice things.

- It seems to pretty sharp throughout its zoom range (caveats below).
- The construction seems reasonably solid. It doesn't feel flimsy. The body is rigid and nothing rattles if you shake it.
- Unlike other reviews I've seen, I like the built-in lens shade. I've had a number of camera lenses with shades and this one is pretty hefty/solid by comparison.
- With a 100mm front element, this thing is BRIGHT! When you turn the zoom to max, this scope is as bright or brighter than an average scope is at its minimum zoom.

I'll go ahead and say the one really bad thing I have to say about the scope: the tripod that comes with it is utter, absolute, inconceivable JUNK! I saw similar comments in other reviews and I can only say that I don't think any of them went far enough when it came to bashing that tripod! When you open the box, grab the tripod and throw it into the nearest trash can and never waste another thought on it. If they paid more than $1 for it, I'd be amazed! Mine was broken when I got it and even if it hadn't been, it would never hold up this scope.

This next bit isn't necessarily bad, but it is critical: this scope is HUGE!! The pictures do NOT properly convey its size. Without the lens hood extended, it is 19 and 3/4 inches long and the outside diameter of the front is just shy of 5 inches. The product page says 9 pounds and you should believe it. The problem with this is the weight distribution. This scope is VERY front-heavy and they did not put the tripod mount under the center of gravity so you constantly have to deal with the consequences of that design decision.

Have you ever taken a ruler and clamped one end of it to a desk so that you could pluck the other end and make it vibrate? That's what this scope is like on a tripod. It is so front-heavy that it puts a lot of twisting force (torque) on the head of the tripod and therefore puts the whole tripod under tension. Consequently, it vibrates and jiggles at the slightest touch. It will even vibrate when someone walks past the tripod (depending on the surface you're on).

If you need a scope for something that requires constant resetting of the scope, you may want to go for some other scope. I bought mine to use primarily as a spotting scope at the rifle range so this isn't a big issue for me. I also have a fairly heavy duty Bogen professional photography tripod from my days as a photographer and while it has no problem with the weight, even it vibrates a lot with this scope. It all comes back to their (crazy) decision to not put the tripod mount under the center of gravity. If they had done that right, then at least the tuning-fork-like vibration problem would be eliminated.

This finally brings me back to sharpness. It doesn't matter whether this lens is sharp or not if it's vibrating. You can't see much of anything while that is going on. When it does settle, though, it seems be as sharp as I can ask for. I live in Atlanta so there is always enough humidity and/or haze to wash out colors and details even at two hundred yards. And at that distance, wind and heat shimmer also interfere with resolving detail so at this point the best I can say is it looks sharp to me. If you focus on something close enough to eliminate those factors (say 100 feet or less), it is very sharp and seems to have good color saturation and contrast.

Now that I'm thinking about it, I should probably say more about brightness. For those that may not know, any zoom lens of any type will always look darker as you go from minimum zoom to maximum zoom. At max zoom (75x), this scope is still as bright as the naked eye. It is great at twilight. You can look at birds or animals in brush after the sun has gone down and have no problem at all seeing every detail. The flip side of that coin is that it is very bright at min zoom (25x) in bright sunlight. If you use this in bright sunlight with a scene that is mostly light colors (i.e. white sand), then your eyes will probably start hurting in short order. For anything less extreme, you can probably tolerate it.

Misc.

- It has very short eye relief (I think that's the right term). In other words, you have to have your eye very close to the eye piece to see the full image. If you wear glasses and for some reason can't use a scope without them, you will not be able to use this scope. And considering the brightness of this scope, that also goes for sun glasses.
- It is supposed to be "waterproof" but I will not ever willingly test that claim. :) For what it's worth, I did see one reviewer who said he left it on his deck over-night and the dew didn't seem to effect it.


In summary, I'm pretty happy with the scope but it may not be for everyone.