I'm a noob concerning Night Vision. Here's the deal: I would consider myself a likely casual NV user primarily. I want some NV for SHTF, power outages, natural disaster, looking around the neighborhood (looking for prowlers as well). I'm having a hard time justifying to myself spending $2000+ for a PVS-14 type monocular setup. But I don't want a low-end piece of crap that I'm probably not going to be happy with. I am having a hard time coming up with enough ways to use the thing to make it worthwhile to buy.
I don't forsee myself riding a bike in the dark, and I don't have anyone to night hike with.
To be sure, I have several rifles that I shoot, and which cost a fair bit of coin to outfit, and are pretty unlikely to ever be used in self-defense, but I still have them.
I'd looked at the D-300 series from Victor, and it looks marginal, based upon my locale (15k population town, on the edge of town, but it does get pretty dark here). It's a mix of near-country and Suburban McMansions, so there may be issues with bright lights in some areas of town. From what I've seen on the message boards, having the manual gain adjustment of the PVS14 would be a pretty good idea. But that takes me from a $1500 (D-300) unit to what, $2700-2800 for a MUM that's still 2nd-generation. I definitely can't afford $3000+ for a real PVS-14.
I guess I'm looking for encouragement as to why I should spend what is a lot of money on something that I don't expect to use a lot. But something that may come in VERY handy someday...