The next thing you should do is to turn your gaze and while you are still looking at the big front lenses, slant the pair of binoculars around slightly as you look deep inside for more reflections. All the reflections you see inside need to be colored as opposed to being white. If the front lenses give a white reflection, that should a sign that the glass surface does not have any coatings at all. There are people who believe that all they need to do is to read the product description for words such as fully coated, multi-coated or simply coated as indicated by the manufacturers, nothing could be further from the truth; it is in testing where the rubber meets the road.

Check the exit pupil: The next thing you do is hold it at arms length with the eyepieces pointing in your direction. You should be able to see some discs of light, known as the exit pupil floating somewhere behind those eyepieces. High quality binoculars will have exit pupils that are perfectly rounded while the poor quality ones will have what looks like squared off ones; buy only those units that have round exit pupils.