If you're looking to get into night vision monoculars and you want to keep your costs down below $200, there's a few decent options but the three main contenders would be the NVG40, the Nightfox Prowl and the Night Operators Max 2.0. Devices in this price range will have some shortcomings but they are good entry level options for those of you who want to dip your toes into night vision without spending much money. All of these devices can be helmet mounted and even bridged for a bino setup which makes them unique in the budget sub $200 night vision marketplace.
Nightfox Prowl
The Nightfox Prowl is a nice unit for the price and was very popular for a while on Youtube with many reviewers praising its performance for the price. While there are a few pros including the field of view on the device is quite wide, the green phosphor viewing mode is nice and overall there are a lot of options in the menu. Downsides would be that the on board viewing screen resolution is also quite low and the device suffers from tremendous lag and it many cases it was unusuable during our testing and had to be reset many times, even with the firmware updates. It's also heavily reliant on IR lighting and is one of the lowest performers in this category which is important if you need to keep a low IR signature and don't want to be spotted.
Night Operators Max 2.0
Night Operators have done an excellent job getting their name out there on YouTube and TikTok, thought they have been misleading in their marketing efforts buy comparing their device to a pvs14 with IR lighting on and also misquoting the price of the pvs14 substantially. Pros for this unit are a high frame rate and a wide field of view and the screen is decent quality. Cons would be that the build quaility is low, menu options are limited and the low light / no IR performance is very poor and it's extremely reliant on running its built in IR illuminator.
NVG40
The NVG40 is the latest devices to enter the sub $200 night vision monocular market and it does come in cheaper than all of the units discussed previously. This device offers better on board video recording, a circular screen which more closely emulates an actual pvs14, more features and better low light no ir Lighting performance. Its also faster with less latency than the Nightfox prowl and runs at a higher framerate. The main downside to this device would be a more constricting field of view but its low reliance on IR lighting puts it ahead of the other devices if youre concerned about being visible to other people using night vision. You may also enjoy the NVG40 pro which is a color version of the NVG40 but the low light no ir performance is not quite as good as the NVG40.
This photo highlights the difference in performance between the devices to give you a better idea of how they stack up side by side. As you can see visibility with all of these devices are fine with IR lighting on. When thats turned off, you completely lose image with the Prowl and there's very minimal visibility with Night Operators but with the NVG40 you still do have decent visibility, especially compared to the other devices present.
We'd love to see an NVG40 in your hands but if you can afford to step up in price to the $500 range we highly recommend you check out the NVG30 or the NVG50 for even better low light no IR performance. We've also put together an extensive digital night vision tier list video you can check out to see how these devices compare to a bunch of other digital night vision units!