If you can afford them, dedicated binos are absolutely the way to go.

Lighter weight (a bridged PVS-14 will weight 30+ ounces once you factor in the weight of the bridge itself, and the better bridges with more features are heavier) is a big factory if you're going to be wearing the unit for longer durations--if you're only wearing them for a couple minutes at a time, I suppose it doesn't matter as much. The AB Night Vision MOD-3s weigh ~22 ounces, and the Sentinels are around 21, so we're talking more in the range of 8-10 more ounces than 4-6, to say nothing of additional counterweighting you might need.

Almost all bridged PVS-14 designs require you to turn both units on and off independently, which again, is perhaps not a huge deal if you're out hunting, but if you're in a situation where you need to rapidly deploy and/or stow your goggles, they can be a significant disadvantage, as you need to either use both hands (meaning you need to relinquish positive control of your weapon), or activate/deactivate them one by one. Dual gain comes with similar problems if you're adjusting the gain a lot, however, in general, manual gain control is much less important if you're running a binocular system compared to the monocular system--which is why most binocular systems use MX-10160 format automatic brightness control tubes, rather than MX-11769 manual gain tubes--manual gain is only really important if you're swiveling one side up to use it as a monocular, which is why devices like the AN/PVS-31 have a single gain adjustment.

It is also extremely difficult, if not impossible to properly collimate bridged PVS-14s--the best you can really do is properly align the devices and hope that the tubes are close enough that you don't have an uncomfortable amount of shift between them, most newer production PVS-14s are not too bad with this, but many people bridging PVS-14s aren't using the newest devices, either. That being said, most currently available bridge systems don't necessarily do the best job of alignment, either, with most of them simply relying on the threaded J-Arm attachment point, which is not the most stable attachment point for aligning two devices together.

Granted, if you're say in a unit or organization like an LE agency that has a bunch of PVS-14s and want binocular capabilities, and simply buying or acquiring dedicated binoculars is out of the question, a bridged PVS-14 is better than no binos, it will get you there, but it's still not the ideal solution, same if you simply cannot afford to buy a dedicated binocular system all at once.

The "what if I have to split one out as a loaner" argument held some water in the past--but with the MOD-3s, it's a non-issue, same goes for "what if one breaks?" which is generally unlikely, as most bino systems are frankly more robust than the PVS-14, and again, if you were to somehow damage one of the pods, or the bridge of your MOD-3s, you could always install a monocular adapter, and run it as a monocular until you had the opportunity to repair the other pod.

The topic is also addressed in our Tech Talk Vol. 2 video:



~Augee

MOD. 3. B.



~Augee