Best Sailing & Birding Binoculars under £200/$200

Hi there, thanks for contacting me, I will try to answer your questions as best I can:

Argon vs Nitrogen:
Firstly just to say that replacing the air inside a binocular with a dry gas helps prevent fogging of the internal lenses. To keep the gas inside, the bins obviously have to be sealed and so will be waterproof, but the gasses don’t help with the waterproofing.

Anyway, I have actually recently being doing some research on this very subject and have read a few theories as to which gas is better at fog proofing. Personally I would not worry too much about which gas is used as both work fine, but if you want to read the whole debate, take a look at the Argon vs Nitrogen for Fogproofing Binoculars on my complete guide to water & fogproof bins.

ED Glass
ED glass improves a binocular no matter the application so will be fine for both birding and Sailing. For more on this read my Complete Guide to ED Glass.

Recommendations under £200/$200
As for some binoculars that I recommend – within your budget, water proofing is no problem, but it is pretty hard to get a bin with ED glass.. but you will be glad to hear, not impossible!

If you take a look at these articles:

• Best Binoculars for under $200 / £200
• 10x42 Binoculars for Bird Watching
• Best Binoculars for Watching Sailing

There is one binocular that I have reviewed that features in all of them that has ED Glass and is just within budget: The Vanguard 10x42 Spirit ED Binoculars which has a retail price just over your budget, but the manufacturers have a £40 cashback deal in the UK or a $50 Rebate in the US and a which brings them into range and makes them incredible value for money.

For birding especially, if you want a wider field of view, you could consider getting the 8x version of the spirit ED instead.

I hope this helps and please just ask below in the comments section of you have any further questions.