It’s so small! The Pard Leopard 640 is refreshingly petite compared with the majority of monoculars. It’s only 18cm long, 6cm wide and 5cm high. It weighs just 367g with battery and strap.
And get this: that all incorporates its built-in laser rangefinder.
This little pocket rocket is a fully featured thermal monocular despite its diminutive dimensions, and the fact that it costs a very appealing $3000 only boosts my opinion of it.
That price is for the top-of-the-range model, with the 640-pixel sensor, 35mm lens and rangefinder, but there are 480-pixel, 25mm and non-rangefinder options available if your budget doesn’t stretch that far.
I like this one a lot as it has a generous 12.5° field of view — not as wide as the 25mm lens, admittedly — but it covers enough ground for practical use anywhere down to about 50m while still presenting good detail out further.
The image quality and clarity is adequate, which is exactly what you expect in this low-ish price bracket by thermal standards. It might take you a bit longer to properly identify a target animal compared with higher level thermals but it will find them for you and, in most circumstances, tell you what you need to know before the animal has a clue you’re there.
But what must be said is that, certainly in my experience, I’ve never seen this level of clarity in something so small, and that’s where the Leopard’s value lies.
The sensor measures 640 x 512 pixels, and they are a small 12 microns in size. The NETD temperature difference rating is low at 20mK or less, so the specs are certainly good.
The resulting image is displayed to you on a hi-res 1920 x 1080-pixel screen.
Pard provides six colour pallettes, three scene modes and the usual mixture of other image adjustments to get the most out of the monocular.
The Pard menu is mainly logical and it’s easy to get in and out of it.
The four main control buttons on top of the body are also logical, and just large enough on this little unit that you can run your fingers along them and know exactly which button you’re pressing.
As usual, the more you use it, the more you’ll remember what each one does and what kind of press it needs to perform its functions.
Importantly, the critical ones for colour pallette, ranging and zoom require just a quick press of the second, third and fourth buttons respectively.
When you activate the rangefinder, it stays on until switched off, continually ranging whatever you point it at.
It does this very quickly and accurately, and I was easily getting readings a bit beyond the claimed maximum of 1000m. If you’re looking into a forest full of treetops it doesn’t always pick up the distance but not much else stops it.
I keep saying it, but a rangefinder on a thermal is almost essential because unless you’re extremely familiar with the terrain, there’s no other way of knowing how far away a target is; you can’t see it, and the monocular’s two-dimensional view isn’t going to give you clues, so the rangefinder is invaluable.
As we know, the Leopard is very small. It’ll drop into the pockets of most outdoor pants and jackets. It comes with a clip-on lanyard so you can hang it around you neck, where it won’t bother you much.
It fits easily into small hands.
Yet at the same time it’s design makes it big enough that most hands will be able to work their way around the controls without any trouble. I’ve used bigger units that were not as ergonomically sorted as this is.
I like the fact it takes a replaceable, rechargeable 18650 battery of 3.7 volts and 3200mAh. I usually got about four hours out of one, give or take. On long nights I packed a spare.
There is, of course, a standby mode you can activate by quick-pressing the on-off button.
You can charge the battery in the unit via the USB-C plug in the left-side compartment, next to the mini HDMI port and the slot for a micro-SD card.
Photos and videos are each captured in high resolution of 1440 x 1080 pixels.
The Leopard has hot-track mode, a gyroscope to show you angles of view and cant, a compass and all the other typical conveniences a decent thermal monocular has.
And its IP67 protection rating indicates it’s going to survive outdoors in all weather.
I think it’s a great little device — little being the operative word.
Serious users might want better image clarity but to get a worthwhile improvement it’ll cost you a lot more than the top-shelf Leopard’s $3000.
I think most users who’re shopping in this price range will be quite satisfied with the image as well as the myriad features including rangefinder.
And anyone who uses handheld thermal monoculars is going to rejoice in the Pard’s very compact design. That’s the real attraction.
Pard is distributed in Australia by Australian Sporting Agencies. The Leopard 640 35mm LRF has a RRP of $2999. Details and specifications are available here.
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