When we were young children we all wanted to be able to see clearly in the dark. Now we’ve grown up let’s turn these thoughts into a reality and buy a real pair of night eyes – Night Vision Goggles! Which pair are the best for you though? It’s a tricky decision, so I wrote this handbook to help you out a little.

First you need to decide what type of night vision equipment you want. You can have either image intensifying or thermal and they both have distinct advantages and disadvantages. There is also a big price differences so picking the wrong type for your purpose could be very costly.

Image intensifying works using electrons which pass over a special plate inside the night vision equipment. They then create another image of the light received by tracing a new image around the darker light. This practice can work quite well however the main drawback with image intensifying equipment is that there needs to be some available light for them to work.

The second main type of NVG’s are thermal based. These read the heat given off by items and assign them a colour based on the temperature. The hotter it is the brighter the light. This style of night vision equipment works at its best when used to find and track down small mammals, they’re also the NVG of choice for police officers who use them to find criminals.

The shape of your night vision device will differ wildly depending on its primary role and purpose, hunting equipment for instance will come in the shape of a scope. The armed forces use eye mounted devices that fit onto the helmets of soldiers to enable them to find the enemy without using their hands to see.

The resolution of the image is without doubt the largest factor to determine the price you pay. In brief the resolution is how many lines there are on the screen. The more there are the clearer and crisper the representation will be.

The mobility of your equipment is also an important factor. It’s no use at all having the latest and greatest state of the art equipment if it’s too cumbersome and unwieldy to use effectively. You may even find yourself leaving heavy equipment in its box at home, which ultimately means you wasted a lot of money on something you don’t really use or need. Of all the varieties the monocular is the easiest to transport and fits easily into a long jacket pocket.

The effective range of your equipment is important to many users. Hunters in particular need an effective range that enables them to see their targets from a greater distance. You should be able to find the range on the packaging, make sure to check it’s adequate before you part with your cash.

Clearly, the process of selecting and buying the right night vision gear for you is a long, drawn out and important process. You need to make especially sure you make the right choice to save yourself the trouble of buying a second set. Remember, the key here is to buy the right set dependant on your own specific needs.