Fear not the Darkness (Unless they bring out another Christmas song)....

[secretagentmole]

Well there are two competing add on night vision systems aimed at the "lower" end of the market. The Night Eye NE500 and the Night Sight NS50, both of which are over £400, the Night Eye costs £418 and the Nite Site will set you back £499 (though at the moment they appear to have woken up and are doing a special offer of £399 to the NS50 and £599 on the NS200.

It is wrong to compare the bottom end Nite Site to the Night Eye. The Night Eye has a colour screen for a start, which is only available on the NS200, but seeing as I do not have an NS200, I am going to have to compare bottom end to bottom end (Bottom Inspector?).

1) Presentation. The Night Eye comes in a cardboard box, the Nite Site in a nice plastic case! There are also machining marks on the Night Eye. The Site wins round one! Though £25 at Maplins fixes that!

2) Build quality. The Nite Eye appears more home made than bought, but damned well home made. It is a nice unit, with a stepless IR illuminator, the Nite Site, though more professionally built, has an annoying 4 step click to the illuminator that is worse than treading on a branch!

3) Fitting. Both fit very well, though the Night Eye screwless mount system for the illuminator/screen module is much better than grubbing round in the dark when you have dropped the blasted nut for the Nite Site.

4) Powering up, easy, the colour screen on the NS50 screams class, the screen on the Night Eye is also seems higher resolution! You also have a damned handy off switch on the Night Eye, so if you want to kill the scree, move and scan again, you flick a switch!

5) In the dark. The Nite Site 50 is better at picking up eye reflection and imaging than the specs say, I have counted the bales in a bale wall at 125 metres using an NS50 in the dark. The Night Eye pees on it however, I was picking up buildings at 400 metres in a light mist that disperses IR, in a clear night this unit will not only kill the NS50, it will burn it's corpse and urinate on the ashes!

6) Overall. The Night Eye wins, though at the moment it is £19 more expensive without a fancy box (comparing bottom end to bottom end unit). This is an unfair comparison though as the Night Eye NE500 is actually competing against the much more expensive Nite Site NS200 which is £599!

So the advice is buy a Night Eye, get a much better camera, screen and illuminator set up, go quietly into the night and hunt wabbits!

[Blackrider]

The bit in brackets made me Laugh !
It really was garbage wasn't it !!!