Own the Night with $70 Gen 1 Nightvision

Is $70 night vision any good?

So when the gundeals subreddit posted $70 night vision, I knew I had to try it, it’s the gundeals way. I promised to report back as soon as I got these. These arrived this past Saturday, so I hope your memorial day weekend was as fun as mine.

The Night Owl NOXM42-AL, no idea what that stands for, is a gen 1 russian night vision monocular. This is as basic of a night vision device as you can buy. It weighs in at about 14 ounces, so its a little heavier than a PVS 14, and significantly larger.

What the Night Owl NOXM42-AL Comes with

It comes packaged with a basic nylon pouch, a lens cover with pin hole to help prevent damage to the optic when not in usage, and the owners manual. The housing actually feels sturdy. The controls are simple, it has a hand held strap, there’s only two buttons, one for turning on the device and one for turning on the IR.

The optic has 3x fixed magnification, and a 19 degree view.

Nightown Monocular is compact and fits in your hand

Initial Performance

So out of box I got right to testing it in my closet. The closet is maybe 5 feet by 5 feet, so mind you this footage is taken at close range. You can see a little bit of my sentry safe here and some ammo cans. I don’t have much experience with night vision devices, as in near zero. A family member owned a different Gen 1 old soviet night vision device that I think he bought from a sporting goods magazine decades ago, so that was the extent of my experience with gen 1 russian night vision. This thing was way clearer, it isn’t even close. I was actually super impressed, I thought for $70 this would be absolute trash.

Maybe by night vision folks standards this is, again this is my first forray into the world of night vision at all. Im sure it doesn’t compare to a PVS-14 but I’ve never used one so I really have nothing to compare against.

Mounting the Night Vision to my Head

But a florida man has to florida man. If they didn’t want you to strap this to your head, they wouldn’t have invented zip ties. With $70 night vision, the trailer parks of Florida will never be safer, the hogs of Florida never in more danger.

So strapped up and ready to liberate grandma’s basement, nightfall came, and it was time to put these to the real test.

This is super uncomfortable and I don't recommend it — This is super uncomfortable and I don’t recommend it

Using the device to test NIR Compliance

I was pretty impressed by the clarity once you brought images into focus. It was actually, if nothing else, interesting to see what pieces of gear really shined and which had terrible NIR compliance. Unsurprisingly, the aliexpress oriental treasures really light up like light bulbs under night vision with an IR illuminator. Here the AR-15 pouch is legit esstac, the pistol mag pouches are $8 chineese esstac knock offs. The difference is more significant in person.

Chinese accessories on my battle belt have awful NIR compliance

Nighttime Walkthrough

Walking around the house was an interesting thing, the optic is really blurry unless you are constantly refocusing. I don’t know if thats typical or not, but I will say you can get a pretty clear image. This footage is taken with my phone camera up against the device and it doesn’t do it justice. It was hard to get a clear image largely because of the phone, but when in focus, it was clear enough I could read words just fine, but I had to constantly readjust my focus.

With adjustment image quality isn't bad — With adjustment image quality isn’t bad

Conclusion

Could you use these things practically for any kind of tactical application, absolutely not. But for $70 this was a really fun experiment and its cheap enough that I will probably give it to my kids to play with running around in the woods. Could your kids own the night in ghost in the graveyard with one of these, 100%. Obviously they will be very easy to ruin being a gen 1 night vision device, they don’t have any sort of auto gating, but for exploring at night at the local camp ground, these are going to be super fun and a great learning experience for my kids.

My kid's scooter under Gen 1 russian night vision — My kid’s scooter under Gen 1 russian night vision

So yeah, money well spent, and it beats buying your kids another toy that they won’t care about in a month. They would make a great Christmas present, and that’ll actually probably be what I end up giving my son for Christmas. These did not scratch the itch for getting into night vision, but for the price it was a really good primer and I don’t regret it for a second.