Binos - Auto gain or manual gain?

What do you prefer and why?

Thanks.

My UF WP RNVGs are autogain and I used manual gain 14s prior to that.

I don't miss the manual gain and won't use having it or not having it as a decision point in future purchases.

My .02

I feel its a important feature

My rnvg don't have manual gain. I never missed it as seeing with both eyes made a world of difference vs a -14

When I’m using illumination, moving between environments, etc. is when I absolutely don’t want to be messing with my optics. So I like auto gain.

I'm going to mirror what many others have said in this thread.

I don't miss manual gain when I went to a bino with auto.

For me manual gain is a great feature to have for a few key reasons.
1) If you're in an area with little ambient light present you have the ability to turn down the gain and reduce the amount of scintillation/noise your peepers are receiving and better make out an image.

2) You have the ability to adjust the gain to better match your surrounding lighting conditions.

3) Auto gain is like a one size fits most, but may not fit your eye comfort level especially if you're light sensitive and/or for long durations.

4) Having manual gain you can set it to a setting that is right for you eyes and you don't have to adjust it if you don't want to. A lot new users are misinformed by others post that they may have to keep adjusting the gain to see in different environments.

5) It's better to have the option and not use it vs making a huge investment and wishing you had it.

IF you can have it, why wouldn't you choose it?

I've never bumped my gain setting and accidentally adjusted the goggles.  Sure, could it happen?  Yeah.  It's unlikely.

I flew in two wars with auto-gain.

I have a mixture of options in my personal tool bag now in the civilian world. I wouldn't stress too much about it.

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Because the last thing I need to be doing is adjusting my NODs when I should be doing important things.

This question seems to pop up every month lately.  You have to try them both and see what works, for you.  

Yes, there are many who say absolutely unneeded.  But there are also some of us who like it.  I have light-sensitive eyes and wear shades all the time.  I use manual gain and adjustable irises to get the light level and focus where it needs to be.  But that is strictly for me.  It seems we usually run about 75-80% ABC, and 20-25% MGC around here.  If that's any indication of the community at large.  

One thing that seems to always pop up, is aviation vs ground use.  Sure if you're flying, with one hand on stick, the other on throttle/collective, you might want ABC.  But if you're on the ground, sorta depends on what you're up to, and if you have time to adjust gain, as necessary.   So I hear this argument, but it doesn't care carry much weight, for me.  I am neither aviator or assaulter.  

But you don't have to...

I've used both. I prefer manual. But auto is alright. I just like being able to turn it down at times.

Do you have the same outlook on red dots with more than one brightness setting? You can just keep it set on one setting.

I guess this makes me a double 'tard because I like MGC and adjustable irises.  That's two extra controls to fiddle with.  But in my case, I spend 100% of my time out "LARPing" as they say today, so it's exactly zero issue for me.

But I am in no way, shape, or form advocating one way or the other, merely pointing out that this ultimately depends on the individual.

People are generally going to post the preference that they bought (confirmation bias), unless they own multiple systems that are very similar with both technologies. When I had only Aurora Pro Binos, I could turn down the screen brightness where, when I looked around/under the devices, my Natural Night Vision was unimpeded. At night shoots in Garrettesvile, OH, I would look through other guys stuff, and always came away with less Natural Night Vision with the Auto units. Guys with Manual units would also sometimes have them "cranked", but when I mentioned it - they turned them down and I had a similar brightness to the Aurora Pros - I liked that, and went with Manual Gain when I bought a set of Analog. I liken Auto to Helmet mounted Thermals (at least the MH25) - the screen on the darkest setting, is still bright AF. I personally wouldn't be too chuffed about having to use Iris' to darken an image, but that's just me. As most other stuff, personal preference has a BIG role to play.

This is a good point. With an auto adjust on a RDS sometime the one selection doesn't work well for your eyes and ambient lighting. Having the ability to manually adjust it to your preference is an added benefit.

If an RDS existed that had automatically variable dot brightness that was as good at adjusting to the correct brightness as my binos, I would use it. Dots adjusted improperly for the light level are a huge problem especially now that all the best dot setups can’t have effective fixed iron sights.

There is no "correct" brightness setting for any given situation.

No one has the same eyes.  What might be "best" for me is not the "best" for someone else.

Hence why some people like Manual Gain.

There is no "best" option here guys.  There is only the subjective notion of "best" based upon what the end user wants or needs.

This is a preference thing guys.  Give it a rest already. :P

With my 14s I like to be at less than max gain if I can be because the scintillation gets pretty bad under lots of lighting conditions.

With my binos, the unfilmed tubes like to be bright, scintillation is barely a thing. The ABC works so fast it’s hard to detect most of the time. It’s boring and that’s how I like it.

We have talked about this before in various threads, but I wanted to shed a little historical perspective on NODs.

I started flying with cut-away ANVIS 5's back in 1990. They were amazing at the time, but all things are relative. None of you would like those goggles now after you have experienced the "good stuff." They were heavy and their performance was nothing like today. The Army soon upgraded to ANVIS 6 which were lighter and better. But NVG's back then didn't handle any bright light very well and were really sensitive to red lights. It was really difficult to fly in any urban setting with lots of ambient light pollution.

As the years went by, NVG's got better at auto-gating and halo reduction. ANVIS 6 went through numerous generational improvements so that by the time we were in Iraq, you could fly around the cities with much more effectivity.

I medevaced a soldier out of Camp Harriman/Oregon E one night in April 2003, while there were several strong thunderstorms in the area. It was so bad that our goggles were completely shutting down due to auto-gating. Lightening was all around us, and the NODs would completely blank for a second or so. It felt like a lifetime as we were flying at terrain flight altitudes through the mountains headed back to Salerno/Khowst.

We got back around 21:30 or so and he went straight into the OR. He lost both his legs, and it was not looking good. I laid back down on my bunk, and was awakened about 03:00. He needed to get to Bagram or he was not going to live. We saddled up with our AH-64 escort and headed out to Bagram. We approached Bagram as the sun came up, and this was the first time that I had ever de-goggled as a new day broke.

I wish I had pictures of my Head Up display that attached to my NVG's, because that piece of equipment saved my bacon many times, and it saved soldiers lives as it allowed me to land in browned out LZ's that would have been impossible without it. Some of the pictures that I have were taken by a German Special Ops doctor that flew unofficially with us. I was too busy to take pictures when things got dicey.

I know that many of you here were out there fighting the good fight. You have my respect and my love. I will leave when I have your wounded!
Here is the Doc.
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Camp Harriman on a nice day.
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Thanks, I appreciate it. There are a lot of guys here who have sacrificed a lot for our great nation.