Alpen Rainier Binoculars

Alpen Optics is a relative newcomer to the market of high quality optics. The company was begun by two former employees of Bausch and Lomb who each have over 30 years designing binoculars and scopes. Their first quality line, the Apex, was reviewed here in early 2004. Late in 2006, Alpen introduced the Rainier, their new premier quality birding binocular, designed to compete with the best products from other optics manufacturers. The Rainiers are a roof prism design, O-ring sealed, and nitrogen-purged to be waterproof, dust proof and internally fogproof. Available in 8x42 and 10x42 configurations, the Rainier is a high-end optic, priced at $1200 or more, but available on sale for as little as $810 (8x) or $855 (10x). It is also distinctly a cut above anything ever produced by Alpen before. This raises sort of an interesting question: if you’re an optics manufacturer trying to produce a premium quality product, how do you improve on an already solid product like the Apex? We took a close look at the 8x42 model to see if we could figure it out.

You can’t do it by just doing more of the same. The Rainiers are not just an extension or a continuance of previous Alpen products; they are a departure, something different from all other Alpen binoculars. It’s visible as soon as you see them next to the Apex models. At 6.25 inches long and 5.0 inches wide, the Rainier is bigger. For the same size of objective lenses (42 mm), the ocular tubes are wider, and the ocular lenses are bigger as well, at nearly 25 mm across. That’s the first hint: there’s more glass in these. In fact, there is more glass in them, relative to their other lines, than you can see: there are several additional elements in the ocular end alone. Pick them up and you can feel it too. They have a solid, substantial feel. The Rainiers weighed 33.5 oz. on our postal scale, well above average for a roof prism binocular. As the Rainiers are very well balanced, they don’t feel as heavy in the hands as they actually are. Even with a magnesium frame beneath, more glass weighs more. But it also means more performance.

The Rainiers have extra large prisms made of BaK4 glass for the highest and brightest resolution and this should sound familiar. Virtually all high-end optics (with a few notable exceptions) are made of this glass, which is pretty much the industry standard. The prisms feature more than 60 layers of Alpen’s SHR™ metallic coating, PXA™ phase coating and UBX™ multi-coating. In case you’re wondering, phase-coating helps to focus all the different wavelengths of the visible light spectrum to roughly the same point, improving contrast and clarity, while multi-coating and metallic coatings enhance light transmission. Every manufacturer has their own versions of these coatings for their high-end optics. In this case, the metallic and multi-coatings are what distinguish the Rainier from the next binocular line down in the Alpen family. It all comes down to light transmission, and the Rainiers are visibly brighter than Alpen’s other binoculars. In comparison with other ~$1000 binoculars, the Rainiers are of comparable brightness.

The Rainiers have several other notable properties as well. The 8x model has an extra wide field of view: 393 feet at 1000 yards (the average 8x roof prism comes in at about 360 feet) while the 10x model is also impressive at 341 feet (an average 10x roof prism is about 319 feet). So the Rainiers are wider angle than the average roof prism binocular. Alpen sales literature lists the Rainiers as having a minimum close focus of 6.5 feet. In our tests, the binocular had no difficulty maintaining sharp image quality down to about 5.5 feet, though the ocular field began to break down inside of 6 feet. In this case, as usual in these things, the fields separate and the dominant eye takes over. This is routine in close focus studies – it always happens at some point, the only issue being where. In this case, a close focus of under 6 feet is better than industry standard for a quality roof prism optic. The 8x Rainier is listed as having long eye relief of 18 mm while the 10x has 16 mm. Both those values are slightly more than average for the respective magnifications. Obviously, these binoculars should be just fine for birders who wear glasses. We measured the interpupilary distance on the 8x model at 55-75 mm, which is interesting. This is a broader range than most binoculars have, and most importantly, it is a bit more narrow than many meaning it’s a more comfortable fit for people with narrow faces, while still opening enough to accommodate wider faces.

Like all other Alpen binoculars we’ve seen, the Rainiers have forest green rubber armoring with black accents provided by the eyecups, the lens caps, rainguard and the knurled surface on the metallic portions of the focus knob and the diopter adjustment. As noted above, the Rainiers have ocular tubes of larger than usual diameter. The no-slip surface of the armoring provides a great feel and grip, while shallow thumb grooves in just the right place on the underside improve the comfort. The focus knob itself is broad and has a very smooth mechanism, even right out of the box, going from minimum close focus to infinity in 1.5 turns of the knob, which is exactly average for a modern roof prism binocular.

The Rainiers focus rapidly and smoothly; we give the focus mechanism high marks for ease of use. The diopter adjustment mechanism is a twisting ring at the base of the right ocular lens, which locks fully when flush against the base of the barrel; to unlock it, pull it towards the ocular lens. A raised triangle in the armoring of the barrel lines up with a black 0 on the twisting ring to mark the position for equal eyes. The ring adjusts 4 diopters in either direction, with each diopter broken down into thirds, marked by hash marks on the ring, which also line up the triangle on the barrel. Thus, if your eyes aren’t equal, if the position of the ring is lost, you can return to it directly without having to figure it all over again. The various positions of the ring are even marked by subtle detent positions of the ring. This is the most sophisticated and well-executed diopter adjustment system we’ve seen yet. The eyecups are of slightly harder black rubber, and these adjust positionally with the now nearly ubiquitous helical twist mechanism. In addition to fully out and in, there are two very stable positions in between marked with solid detents that showed no tendency to collapse in the field during extensive testing. Once again, these are well executed.

The rain guard is a pair of loose-fitting plastic cups joined by a flexible bridge region that very similar to the mechanism used on many binoculars we've tested. The strap threads through a bracket on the left side; the right bracket is gapped so the guard can be slipped onto or off the strap at will. The rain guard fits snugly on the oculars and does not dislodge easily, while at the same time, it is easy to put in place. This is basically as good a rain guard system as we've seen. The lens caps are soft rubber caps that fit snugly into the armored ends of the barrels with flanges that are long enough so they don’t come out easily, but fit loosely enough that they are not a struggle to put in place. Each cap is attached to a long rubber tether that allows it to swing down out of the field of view. The tethers attach to a screw-in plate on the hinge between the barrels. For once, someone made the tethers long enough and heavy enough that it takes quite a breeze to blow them to the point where they occlude the view. Of all the tethered lens caps we’ve seen, these are about the best executed so far. This aspect of the design was very well engineered. Unfortunately, Alpen really fell down with the strap, which while adequately padded, was way too short. We talked with the design team on this and that was the first thing they apologized for! But seriously, we would strongly recommend that you substitute a harness-type strap for this binocular anyway, so don’t take this criticism too seriously. In fact, Alpen is even considering supplying a harness-type strap with the Rainier as a standard feature, a move we would heartily applaud. The faux leather case is quite nice, with a Velcro-closing flap, an outer pocket and enough room in it that the binocular still fits even if the eyecups are fully extended.

We are favorably impressed with the Alpen Rainiers. At the beginning, we asked how one designs a brand-new high-end binocular. Alpen’s answer to that is you give a little bit more of everything than expected: with better than average performance in almost every category at a price below $1000. The Rainiers are a solid, durable binocular, backed by Alpen’s lifetime warranty which basically covers all manufacturing defects for the lifetime of the optic. Officially, that’s as far as it goes. Unofficially, Alpen is a company that prides itself on customer service and is willing to work with customers to ensure their satisfaction. If you have a problem with these, they will strive to help you with them. When we first started handling these, we were impressed with the image quality, but put off by the weight. The more we tested them, however, the better we liked them. It will be interesting to see how birders receive these.

Alpen Rainier Binoculars - current price and availability