HIKMICRO HE25L MULTI-SPECTRUM BINOCULAR
- Last updated: 12/12/2024
I don’t usually do HikMicro reviews, but when a friend bought a pair of Habrok HE25L multi-spectrum binoculars and then had to take some time off stalking for medical reasons, I figured it’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good and asked for a loan. And I’m glad I did.
Let’s take a look
The Habroks have some cast-iron logic behind them. They’re a daylight binocular, a night vision device (complete with infrared illuminator), a thermal spotter, and a laser rangefinder, all in one, and at just £1,200 list price, you’d be hard-pressed to buy four separate devices for that money. On top of which, they let you radically simplify your field load-out, reduce overall weight, free up pockets, and eliminate ‘fumble time’. Additionally, their multi-spectral capability makes them uniquely efficient for spotting and identifying potential quarry, whilst the intuitive design and simple controls ensure you will be using them to best effect in pretty short order.
My preference was to scan, spot, and provisionally identify with full-screen red-hot thermal, then confirm the target by blipping the mode button to switch to 4K digital daylight or NV, and either short-pressing the zoom button to obtain the optimal level of digital zoom, or long-pressing it to open the picture-in-picture window for simultaneous bi-spectral viewing. Switching is instant, and because you’re no longer swapping between different devices, there’s no risk of losing the target as you change spectrum, especially when your quarry wanders back into cover and you need a seamless transition to thermal mode.
The digital camera and thermal spotter are housed in the left and right barrels, respectively. The focusing rings for the objective lenses are broad and tactile, their firm-but-smooth movement an aid to accurate focusing. The tethered rubber lens covers are easy and silent to remove and fit, although it is also quite easy to pop them off by accident. The ocular lens housings are individually focusable, protected by flanged rubber buffers, and adjustable to match the distance between the user’s eyes. Focusing gives a sharp and even view of the display, where crucial information is presented via clear, well-proportioned icons.
Located between the barrels is the IR illuminator: an 850nm LED with a focusable lens (flood-spot) and a useful range of around 150m. You can choose between low, medium or high intensity, or activate ‘smart IR’, which automatically selects the optimal setting for the conditions. It works well. On the unit tested, the beam was slightly offset to the right, but this didn’t matter at the longer ranges where a tight focus was needed.
How far?
Tucked away under the IR illuminator is the ultra-compact laser rangefinder. I kept forgetting it was there, so I didn’t put it properly through its paces. However, it ranged a deer for me at 759m at the first press, so I can well believe its 1,000m rating. You can configure it for single-shot or continuous ranging, and to revert to single-shot mode after a set interval. Readings appear clearly but unobtrusively in the top-right of the display, and the rangefinder’s underslung location ensured my fingers never blocked the beam.
Behind the rangefinder is a tripod socket. Without room on either side for a full-sized tripod head, HikMicro supplies an adapter. My friend had mislaid his, which was unfortunate, as handheld operation at higher magnifications results in a very shaky image, and I would have loved to put the Habroks on a tripod, use the remote viewing facility provided by the Wi-Fi link and HikMicro Sight smartphone app, and see the difference.
Power
Also accessed from underneath are the battery compartments, with one in each barrel. They are again well-designed, with secure but easy-to-operate latches, and covers tethered by a flexible strip that also serves to lift the battery out of the housing. Better still, HikMicro includes four good-quality, rechargeable 3200m Ah 18650 batteries and a nice charger with an illuminated LCD screen to keep them ready for use. I didn’t log the run-time, but the word ‘plenty’ comes to mind, and I never needed a battery change mid-outing.
Lastly, there’s a USB-C port under another well-fitting cover. This can be used for direct power and charging (progress is indicated by a small red/green LED), for transferring images from the onboard 64Gb memory module, or for updating the Habrok’s firmware. You can also perform the latter two functions via Wi-Fi on the app. As it happened, HikMicro released a firmware update while I had the Habroks, so I can confirm that installation was trouble-free. I was also glad to find that the app allowed me to connect the Habroks to my Android phone without first requiring me to deactivate my SIM (other brands take note!).
Controls
Time now to check out the primary controls. These comprise two lines of three buttons each. In a genius/common-sense move, each button has a raised lip at the front on the front ones, at the side on the middle ones, and at the rear on the rear ones. Consequently, a tiny finger movement is all it takes to confirm you’ve selected the right button, with or without gloves. On the left-hand side, the buttons are (near-far): measure, image and power, and on the right, zoom, menu and mode. Easy to remember, although I would reverse power and measure, as operating the far buttons was easier and less unbalancing, and ranging was more frequent, urgent, and required more stability than simply turning the unit off or on.
At start-up, power requires an extra-long press, which avoids accidental activation. Once on, a quick press will engage a power-saving standby mode, whilst a longer press will initiate a power-off countdown, which a further quick press will abort. So full marks there.
The image button gives you a still image with a quick press, and video with a longer one. There’s no pause function for video recording, but you do get visible confirmation of successful captures, and images can be reviewed in the display. This is a valuable aid to post-shot analysis if you stalk with a buddy. Formats are MP4 and JPG, but stored images are derived from the 1920x1080px OLED display rather than the 3840x2160 CMOS sensor, which seems a lost opportunity.
Last but not least, the magic mode button lets you switch between thermal and digital with a quick press, and between 4K daylight and NV with a long press. As for menu, a quick press accesses the brightness (1-10), contrast (1-10), zoom and IR functions, and provides a gateway to the next level. Overall, the menu proved easy to navigate and let me customise the binoculars to my preferences to a welcome degree.
The magnification is controlled by the zoom button. The native magnification (5.5x on the 4K side and 4.3x on the thermal side) can be boosted digitally in three 2x increments. Despite a ‘Zoom Pro’ function that ‘rebuilds’ the image as you zoom in, pixelation (and image shake) made the upper two increments unworkable for me, so I would have liked a menu option that deactivated them. Brilliantly, you can do this with the palette selection, which I set up to give me a straight switch to red-hot thermal with no need to muck about scrolling through white hot, black hot, and rainbow. I’d also like the image in the PiP window not to zoom in automatically to the first increment, especially in thermal, where the native 4.3x is already stretching the output from the modest 256x192px / 12μm thermal sensor.
And this is where the crunch comes with the Habrok HE25Ls. Because I typically use high-end thermals and binoculars, my first impression was that the imaging was not great. It felt laggy, it pixelated quickly (immediately in thermal mode), and the shake induced by the excess magnification was intolerable. But then I realised that nothing was getting past the thermal unnoticed and that I could spot, identify, and range everything from a robin at 150m to a roe at 759m. I also concluded that the digital NV was properly useful and that the few things I was struggling to discern at range were rarely important. In short, the Habrok’s daylight and thermal imaging isn’t the least bit pretty, but it is immensely effective, especially when wrapped up with ranging, digital NV, and image capture in a single package that is also intuitive to use, ruggedly constructed, and modest in size and weight. Oh, and don’t forget the convenience of having an on-screen GPS, compass, and inclinometer when you need that data for a ballistic solution.
Conclusion
Whatever the HE25L’s shortcomings, I don’t think the next model up, the HE35L, which has a 640x512/12μm thermal sensor, but a smaller CMOS, and a far higher price (£2.8K), is the answer. My friend is on the mend now, but I’m still stalking with his Habroks! They hang around my neck, my rangefinder and thermal spotter stay home, and my expensive binos are in my back pocket for when I want to take a really good look at whatever the Habroks have found for me.
Contact: Elite Optical -
www.eliteoptical.co.uk