Kowa’s Genesis 10.5x44 XDs are
premium, Japanese-made binoculars with some special features. How do they
compare to market leaders like Nikon and Swarovski?
Kowa Genesis 10.5x44
XD Review
Think about premium binoculars and Kowa doesn’t spring to
mind. No surprise, because Kowa market lots of cheaper Chinese-made optics. But
Kowa does have a little-known range of really high-end binoculars – Genesis XD.
I reviewed the 8x33 Genesis XDs a couple of years ago and
found a very well put together binocular with some good features, but real
excellence in a couple of areas – false colour and resolution. Those attributes
should make for a great birding/astronomy crossover glass in a larger size;
let’s find out if they do.
At A Glance
|
Magnification |
10.5 |
|
Objective Size |
44 |
|
Eye Relief |
13mm (measured) |
|
Actual Field of View |
6.2° (108.3m at 1000m) |
|
Apparent field of view |
~60° |
|
Close focus |
~2m |
|
Transmissivity |
92% estimated |
|
Length |
163mm |
|
Weight |
970g measured |
Data from Me/Kowa
What’s in the Box?
The Kowa XDs come in a white box in a green sleeve that looks
a lot like older Swarovski packaging. No oil painting of a soaring Hawk here
though.
Design and Build
The Kowa
Genesis XD 10.5x44 binoculars on test here are one of just four high-end
binocular models made by Kowa, the others being 8x3, 10x33 and 8x44.
Despite a
reputation for quality scopes, Kowa’s binoculars are mostly generic Chinese
models, apparently re-branded versions of similar ones from the likes of Minox. These binoculars have a good-but-modest reputation
in line with their price.
The four
high-end Genesis XD models look a lot like their cheaper relatives. That’s
unfortunate, because these are very different binoculars - made in Japan to
compete with the best and with lots of premium features, especially in their
optics.
The
slightly higher magnification and lenses sounds odd, but as we will see it
really works.
Body
Plastic
has been used to cut weight in a few areas, the focuser and dioptre wheels for
example, but general build quality is very good. The body is made out of
magnesium alloy, where most of the competition at this price use cheaper aluminium.
These feel
like a classy binocular with excellent fit and finish and quality armour that
is warm and grippy, but not rubbery smelling and fluff-attracting (like
Zeiss’ Conquests’). The armour has a dark, olive green colour (very similar to
Swarovski’s), not the brighter green that many photos erroneously show. The
armour has shallow thumb cut outs on the back, but the body itself is not
sculpted to fit the hand, like Nikon’s HGs and EDGs or even Swarovski’s ELs.
They are a
fair bit larger and heavier than the smallest premium 10x42s – 200g heavier and
2cm longer than Swarovski’s 10x42 SLC HDs, for example.
In case of
doubt, it clearly says ‘Made in Japan’ next to the serial number: these are not
run-of-the-mill Chinese Kowas.
Full
waterproofing and nitrogen purging is claimed.
Focuser
The focus
wheel has a grippy knurled finish and looks like metal, but is made
of engineering plastic to keep weight down. Its finish does collect dust.
Focus
action is fast – just a turn from close focus (~2m) to infinity. But it’s
stiffer than I would like. The optics are so snappy that just the slightest
nudge gets perfect focus. I found myself wanting a slightly slower focuser to get the fine
adjustment required.
Dioptre
adjustment is by the usual ring under the right eyepiece. Unlike many, though,
the ring has to be lifted to turn and then locks when you push it back down. This
is superior to the basic system - It allows a light and smooth action which
would otherwise be too easy to move accidentally. The ring has a thumb detent
to make adjustment even easier, but no Swarovski-like click stops.
Optics - Prisms
The Kowa Genesis XD
range employs conventional Schmidt-Pechan roof
prisms. Such prisms require mirror coatings and these have the premium type
with multiple dielectric layers that give very high reflectance. Such coatings
generally yield a brighter view than silver or aluminium coatings. Kowa call
their dielectric coatings ‘C3’.
Optics - Objectives
Despite
being out for almost a decade, Kowa’s Genesis XD models have an optical design
that makes them a bit special, even today. What is it?
Once upon
a time, binoculars had objectives made of conventional crown and flint glasses.
These failed to bring all the colours to the same focus point. Result? High
contrast parts of the view were fringed with false colours – purple on one
side, green on the other. You’ll have seen this effect in photos taken on a
phone or compact camera.
Then along
came ‘HD’ objectives with a single element of special high fluoride (‘ED’ or
‘SD’) glass allowing them to bring all colours to a better focus. But point a
pair of such HD bino’s at a Rook on a high branch and
you’ll still see colour fringing around the Rook’s black feathers.
Kowa’s
Genesis models – both these 44mm and the smaller 33mm variants – have a triplet
objective like many modern binoculars. But crucially two of those lens elements are made of high-fluoride glass. This should in theory give them almost
complete freedom from false colour and so higher resolution as the result,
hence the ‘XD’ tag. As far as I know, just one or two other binoculars
have this feature (Some Zeiss’ HT and perhaps some Swarovski SLC HDs too).
XD optical
design, courtesy of Kowa.
Kowa’s
Genesis objectives have premium multi-coatings with a very neutral, subdued
greenish-purplish hue (not the bright green you get with many cheaper
binoculars that could skew the colour balance). However, one bright reflection
suggests an uncoated surface in there somewhere – hence ghosting is worse than
the best, as we will see.
The
barrels have ridged micro-baffling all the way through the focuser tube and at
least three proper knife-edge baffles against stray light. The first baffle is
notoriously engraved with ‘Prominar’ – Kowa’s brand
name for their premium lenses – but I could find no evidence that those
(potentially reflective) letters caused a problem in use. Internal quality is
some of the finest I have seen – like a fine camera lens in fact.
The
objectives are held in by threaded rings. The threads serve as micro-baffles to
help stop veiling flare, but can be used for filters, including (apparently)
nebula filters for deep sky use!
Optics - Eyepieces
The eyepieces
are a five-element design with large (24mm) eye lenses. They give a wide-field
of view of 6.2 degrees true. That makes them competitive in terms of field
width, especially since they have half an extra power; most of the field is
quite well corrected and usable too.
Kowa claim
eye relief of 16mm, but as usual that’s measured from the surface of the eye
lens (an unreliable way to do it, because the inset of the lens within the eye
cup varies a lot between models and manufacturers). These have deeply inset
eye lenses, so measured from the rim of the eye cup, eye relief is more like
12-13 mm.
This kind
of eye relief is what binoculars used to have and it’s not enough. These are just barely usable with glasses, but nowhere
near the whole field is visible with my specs on.
Another slight negative is that these eyepieces suffer from minor
‘kidney bean’ blackout as you move your eye position (technically spherical
aberration of the exit pupil). This used to be a common defect with wider field
eyepieces, but Swarovski et al have largely done away with it.
The eye
cups have three well-thought-out extended positions that proved ideal for me
when viewing without glasses. The cups twist out smoothly and
lock positively, but they are a bit chunky. Consequently, these are one of
those binoculars that might not fit if you have a narrow IPD.
Accessories
The Kowas have conventional strap
and caps. Quality of these items is adequate, but a bit basic for a binocular
of this price. Similarly, the case is a decent cordura
item – very like the old Zeiss Victory case – but it’s not up to the latest
cases from the Alpha three.
In Use – Daytime
Ergonomics and Handling
The Kowa XDs have a conventional design but they are
comfortable to hold and use. The armour is grippy and warm, but isn’t the
rubbery kind that smells of car tyres and attracts fluff. They don’t feel
unduly heavy, even though they are a bit heavier than many 10x42s.
The focuser falls nicely under my forefinger. As I noted, the
optics are so sharply snappy that getting perfect focus with the fast focus
mechanism takes a bit of practice. The focuser is fine, there’s no slop or
vagueness, but it lacks a bit of fluidity and control compared to the best. At first I though the optics were a
bit soft, but no, I just hadn’t quite got perfect focus.
The Kowa’s look discreet and inoffensive to wear – contrast
the rather (to me) blingy look of a pair of Nikon
EDGs.
The View
The view is excellent - sharp, full of vivid detail and very
bright. I think you can notice that unusual extra half power. On-axis sharpness and resolution are
excellent. The complete absence of false colour makes for a higher resolution
binocular, even higher than most ‘HD’ designs. Mostly, the Kowa’s just get out
of the way and encourage you to view, which is a good thing.
Despite the absolute and very fussy focus snap, depth of
field is perfectly good.
Flat field?
At first the field seems quite flat, but in fact it curves
off gradually in the last 40% and more severely in the last 10% or so, blurring
the view around the field stop. Unlike some binoculars, though, this blurring
is mostly pure curvature – you can focus it away. A trace of astigmatism creeps
in progressively from about 30%, but re-focus them and these are quite sharp at
the edge.
There is virtually no distortion, so these do give quite a
strong rolling ball effect when panning.
Chromatic Aberration
I really struggled to force any false colour out of these at
all. Branches silhouetted against a bright dusk sky are perfectly defined with
no colourful edges. A crow’s black plumage show no purple edging. Panning
through high branches produces no jazzing colour. It’s all most impressive –
amongst the very best.
Pin-sharp on-axis, the Kowa XD’s field curves off
progressively towards the edge.
In Use – Dusk
These are a bright binocular during the day (due to the high
transmission coatings), but at dusk those big lenses add to the equation and
these penetrate dusk shadows extremely well. They keep resolving in low light
too - I watched waders far out on the
bay sands until deep twilight.
In the deepest dusk woodland shadows, the XD 10.5x44s
noticeably outperformed Nikon’s 10x42 SEs. How could this be? The Nikons
probably transmit about 3-4% more of the light they gather, but the Kowa’s 44mm
lenses gather 10% more light. Job done.
If you regularly view at dusk, these could replace your older
10x50s.
The objectives are well recessed and the lens rings
micro-baffled so these do not suffer from veiling flare at dusk.
In Use – The Night Sky
Use at night confirms that off-axis aberrations are almost
entirely field curvature, with very little astigmatism or coma. The overall
impression is of a well-corrected field. Stars distort somewhat from about
60-70% field width, but don’t smear out as they do in some binoculars with
off-axis astigmatism; you don’t get that ‘warp tunnel’ effect that I so dislike
with some Zeiss and Leica models (for example).
Stars in focus are nicely pin-point and free from false
colour, so natural colours show up well and these reveal faint stars for their
class.
Viewing a bright Moon did yield a couple of dim ghosts that
the very best do not. Slightly more troubling were a couple of faint spikes that came and went with
angle and position. Point the Kowa’s at a security light though and you get a
lot of not so faint ghosts and spikes. This is an area where the XDs are not in
the Alpha league.
The Moon
Complete freedom from false colour and very sharp optics mean
these give a perfect view of the Moon – hard and sharp, whites and greys. With
optics this good a surprising amount of detail can be teased out if you hold
them steady (or rest on something). Again, that extra half power helps too and
is surprisingly noticeable.
On a 9-day first quarter Moon, I could easily spot the
prominent formation of Ptolomaeus, Alphonsus and Arzachel on the terminator, including Arzachel’s
central peak. To the south, the crater chain in Clavius
was just catching the sun; to the north were the arcing Apennine mountains and
Archimedes in Mare Imbrium.
Jupiter
Jupiter is a stiff test for binoculars, but the Kowa XD
10.5x44s gave a perfect view with no flared light and the star-like pinpoints
of the Galilean moons clearly visible into morning twilight.
Close by was Mars early in an opposition year. Mars showed as
a perfect bright orange coal through the Kowa’s, clearly a planet and not a
star.
Deep Sky
Despite the field curvature off-axis, the Kowas
gave excellent deep sky views for a binocular in the 10x42 class. Orion’s Great
Nebula was bright and well defined. The clusters running through Auriga easy to
pick out as a frosting of stars. The Pleiades were pin-point and brilliant,
with no flare or false colour.
In dark and clear morning skies, the bright globular clusters
in Hercules – M13 and M92 – really stood out as big, bright fuzzy stars:
brighter than with typical 10x42s.
Overall, the Kowa 10.5x44 XDs performed well for astronomy,
among the best in this class, lagging only behind truly flat field models like
Swarovski’s ELs and really benefitting from their extra power and aperture.
The Kowa Genesis XD 10.5x44s work
very well for astronomy.
Kowa Genesis XD 10.5x44
vs Nikon 10x42 SE
For years Nikon’s SE porro prism
binoculars were my favourite 10x42s and had a similar list price to the Kowas. Let’s compare them:
·
The
Nikon’s are much lighter weight (about 250g lighter).
·
The
Nikon’s have a more fluid focuser.
·
The
Nikons have a flatter but noticeably narrower field.
·
The
Nikons suppress ghosting better.
·
The
Nikons have much more eye relief.
·
The
Kowa XDs work even better in low light.
·
The
Kowa XDs are slightly sharper on axis and control false colour even better.
In some ways the Kowa XDs are as good as the Nikons, which
were once state of the art, but overall I still just
prefer the Nikon SEs. It’s hard to make roof prism binoculars that match the
best porros, unless you really throw expensive
technology at them.
Summary
These Kowa XDs are hard to summarise. Build quality is
top-notch, up with the Alpha makers in many ways. The view is superb centre
field – sharp, bright, vivid and yet neutral. Optical quality and focus snap
are right up there. False colour correction is among the very best I have ever
tested and could be a big selling point for some. The focuser is fast and
though it’s a bit heavy it is smooth and accurate. Big objectives and premium
coatings mean dusk performance is outstanding. Unlike some 10x42s (even premium
ones) they work really well for astronomy and those filter threads suggest that
might be design not accident.
And yet … they are (quite a lot) bigger and heavier than
Swarovski’s SLCs. The field is not flat, but curves off steadily, though
astigmatism is well controlled. Ghosting is at a higher level than the best.
The focuser is almost too fast for the ultra snappy
optics – just the merest nudge gets best focus. The eyepieces are a touch more
sensitive to positioning than the best and can cause mild kidney bean
blackouts. The accessories are a bit mid-market for binoculars of this price.
But really, the main issue is eye relief – it’s just not enough for glasses
wearers and is probably a deal breaker for those like me who view with specs
on.
For everyone else it might come down to price. If the real world price difference between these and a pair of
Swarovski 10x42 SLC HDs is large enough, they are well worth trying out.
Even more than the 8x33 model, these XD 10.5x44s are
virtually an Alpha binocular. They are highly recommended for non-specs
wearers, but only if sufficiently discounted compared to the premium brands.
Roger Vine Jan 2018
