New Gear: Nikon Releases New Monarch HG Binoculars

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New Gear: Nikon Releases New Monarch HG Binoculars

Monarch HG Binoculars ready for field action.

With an increased field of view and superior light transmission capabilities, Nikon's new Monarch HG Binoculars are set to search for targets.

It’s been preached before: You need a solid set of binoculars. After all, you can’t hit a target if you can’t find it.

With this in mind, a bit of recent news from Nikon should get shooters and hunters alike giving the Japanese company a look. The 100-year-old firm recently released an upgrade to one of its most popular lines, and it appears to have all the qualities to help shooter nail down their targets.

The Monarch HG Binoculars are the successors to Nikon’s EDG line and boast some impressive improvements. Aside from more manageable dimensions, always a plus for gear bound for the field, the binos offer one of the best fields of view without having to make the jump to extra-wide angle optics. At 1,000 yards, the 8x42mm Monarch has an extensive 435-foot FOV, and the 10x42mm model has a 362-foot FOV. This arms hunters with binoculars that can glass more landscape in a shorter period of time.

Much of the improved field of view is accomplished by Nikon’s use of a field flattener lens system, sharpening the view all the way to the periphery. Previously, this was technology nearly exclusive to photographic lenses, but given the company’s presence in that market, it is no surprise it has bled over to its sporting optics division.

Monarch HG Binoculars complete kit.

Images should be crisper and clearer with the Monarch HG Binoculars than previous models, with Nikon building the optics around extra-low dispersion glass. The material delivers a sharper, more precise image, vastly reducing the fuzziness of chromatic aberration common to ordinary lenses.

Adding to the crispness of the Monarch’s view is the extensive coating process Nikon has employed. All transmitting surfaces receive a multi coating — a dielectric high-reflective multilayer coating is applied to the roof prisms and an anti-reflection coating on air-to-glass surfaces to top it all off. According to Nikon’s resources, this — combined with generous 42mm objective lenses — is supposed to boost light transmission up to 92 percent. What this means in the field is not only precise images, but also the ability to function in even the lowest-light situations.

The 8x42mm model of the Monarch HG Binoculars has an MSRP of $979, while the 10x42mm model is priced at $999.99. Not bad for a quality mid-range optic that’s built to last a lifetime.


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Elwood Shelton is the Digital Editor for Gun Digest. He lives in Colorado and has provided coverage on a vast spectrum of topics for GD for more than a decade. Before that, he was an award-winning sports and outdoors reporter for a number of newspapers across the Rocky Mountains. His experience has consisted of covering the spread of chronic wasting disease into the Western Slope of Colorado to the state’s ranching for wildlife programs. His passion for shooting began at a young age, fostered on pheasant hunts with his father. Since then, he has become an accomplished handloader, long-range shooter and avid hunter—particularly mule deer and any low-down, dirty varmint that comes into his crosshairs. He is a regular contributor to Gun Digest Magazine and has contributed to various books on guns and shooting, most recently Lever-Actions: A Tribute to the All-American Rifle.

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