I finally got my hands on the Unistellar Envision smart binoculars with augmented reality and I can’t wait to stargaze with them

I have been waiting to get my hands on a pair of Unistellar Envision smart binoculars since they were announced in 2024. Our editor-in-chief tried an early demo of them last year and said that they felt like something out of Star Trek. He was, of course, referencing the red augmented reality (AR) overlay in the Envisions that can identify night sky targets and landmarks, as well as displaying navigational tools. These are the first pair of smart binoculars that can identify targets in the night sky, such as planets, stars and deep space objects.

The build is solid and while they aren’t the most lightweight binoculars, the body is hiding that extra technology that enables the AR overlay in the right hand lens. Each pair ships with a soft carry case, a padded neck strap, a USB-C cable and rubber caps for the eyepieces and lenses.

I would highly recommend setting these binoculars up in the daytime, as you definitely need a few minutes to get used to the controls and to perform the diopter adjustment. After powering on, all I had to do was connect the model to the Unistellar app, which recognised the device easily and then watch the onboarding videos. Unistellar also recommends performing a 360-degree calibration before your first use to help ensure the best performance.

You need to have location services set to “always” for the Unistellar app so that it can work out your exact location and give you an accurate reading on the augmented reality (AR) display for locations of night sky targets and landmarks.

I haven’t had chance to use the night mode on these binoculars yet, thanks to cloudy skies, but I did use the topographical identification and was impressed with the ease of identifying landmarks around my local area. Besides the night and daytime modes, there is also a navigation mode which displays your cardinal direction alongside degrees of your azimuth and elevation angles.

I had a chance to try out the target lock feature on a geographical landmark with a friend and they found the target easily via the indicator on the AR display. The issue with swapping between two people is that the diopter adjustment only be accurate for one person and I can imagine that constantly changing it during field observation would be annoying. My friend also had to adjust the focus wheel to get the AR overlay sharp enough to read but it was a minor inconvenience.

The controls are intuitive and easy to use once you are used to the placement on the top panel. On the left you have the “next” button for advancing a guided tour to the next target, the “target lock” button and the “mode” button for cycling through the different display modes. On the right is the calibration button for adjusting the augmented reality (AR) display against your real-world view and the power button, which doubles up as a switch to turn the AR display on and off.

I’m looking forward to putting the Unistellar Envisions through their paces as I spend more time with them and get some clear skies to try them out on some stars. I think that these are going to be a great tool for learning my way around the night sky, as well as being invaluable when trying to teach others about constellations and targets. With extra functionality expected in future software updates and a plan to allow third-party app development in 2027, I am excited about the possibilities of the exciting new world of smart binoculars.