STEINER SKYHAWK 4.0 8X32 A little unusual…
£340
The Skyhawk range, from German brand Steiner, includes 8x32, 10x32, 8x42 and 10x42 models. I was sent both of the 32s to review but worked on the 8x, the one likely to be of most interest to the birdwatching world.
Steiner talk of “legendary ruggedness” and they do feel solid and substantial. Build quality is very good and not surprisingly the Skyhawk is armoured, stuffed with nitrogen and waterproof. But it is not heavy (582g) and is comfortable in the hands.
The eyepieces twist up and down with no set intermediate positions. I used them twisted up and they held their position. Each eyecup has a fold up/down rubber wing which is intended to shield the eyes from extraneous side light. You can rotate the eyecups to get the wings where you want them. They do make the view easier on the eyes but can make the eyepieces steam up – you can fold them down though so this isn’t a big deal. You could just flip them up when side light was an issue. I did just that and raising one wing eliminated an eyepiece flare-spot. The rubber rainguard works with the wings up or down, but sometimes pulls a wing up when it’s removed from the eyepieces. I recommend attaching the rainguard to the lower end of the strap proper (see below) – otherwise, it dangles too low when not on the eyecups.
The strap attaches to large lugs which are attached to the binocular via a cord loop. Spring clips on the strap enable it to be attached or detached relatively easily. I would have liked to have been able to make the strap a little bit shorter than its design allowed. If that’s a problem, you could use a different strap.
Very unusually, the ring for adjusting the dioptre is under the left, not the right, eyepiece. This doesn’t matter at all, but it is different. The ring itself is lightly clickstopped and stayed in place once set.
Image quality and focusing
The Skyhawk delivers a very good view. There is however, a narrow, soft peripheral ring, which can be fairly obvious, and the black edge is not totally crisp. That aside, sharpness and brightness are both very good and low light
performance is good – on a reasonably bright evening, the Skyhawk differentiated colours 10 minutes after sunset. Colour-fringing seemed pretty well corrected – I saw a little, but there were no major issues. At 133m@1,000m the field of view is good, but perhaps feels a bit narrower than it is because of the soft periphery.
Close-focus is quoted at 2m. Steiner have been cautious here – at least for my eyes – I measured it at about 1.7m, which is very good. Focus precision is very good as well and focusing is fast (“fastclose-focus”) – a gentle touch is required.
The focusing wheel is one finger wide and moves very smoothly, clockwise towards the more distant wildfowl, against moderate resistance, with less than one turn of movement. In normal birding scenarios you won’t need to turn it through more than about 45° – so you can switch from close-in-the-reeds-ReedBunting to over-the-reedbedMarsh-Harrier with minimal wheel turning. The focus wheel is calibrated with a distance scale – Steiner call this the “Distance- ControlSystem”. It “enables pre-setting of observation distance”, but I suspect most birdwatchers won’t bother with that.