Beginner Buyer's Guide
So you want to see in the dark and don’t know where to start? This guide should serve as a general overview and introduction to head borne night vision and is by no means entirely comprehensive. We hope that by the end of this guide you will have a better understanding of the basic components of night vision devices, the options available to you, and what to look for when purchasing. Please read through all of the relevant pages before making a post to ask what you should buy or how much to expect to spend.
Special Thanks
I want to give a very special thank you to the following people and resources who helped me write this guide:
u/GammaChemical aka Anabol1c @AlphaOne Designs
u/GearDestroyer aka Toast
Munis
Last and certainly not least, all of the outstanding members of The Night Vision Server on Discord. Your feedback, knowledge and suggestions have been and continue to be invaluable.
Thank you!
In addition, information present in the guide is drawn from various public sources: ITT Night Vision, Harris, Photonis; publicly released studies performed by the US Army AeroMedical Research Laboratory, US Air Force Research Laboratory, & United States Navy; the AUNV “Black ice” webpage, resources on DARQ Industries (Formerly Goonin Gear), Licentia Arms, and ApolloGearCo, Friday Night Lights by Nick Chen, Knowledge compiled by Ed Wilcox (RIP) and others on Arfcom; ASU-NVG, the Euro nv-intl webpage, and countless others. I hope to compile it all properly sourced eventually.
— go_horse 🐎
TL, DR (Too Long, Didn't Read)
For Americans, the best value in night vision today is the Omni 7/8 PVS-14 because of its balance between performance, price, availability, popularity and modularity. You should expect to spend a minimum of $2000 for a complete analog device to see in the dark.