The ability to see clearly during nighttime has been one of mankind's dearest dreams for many hundreds of years, until night goggles were invented back in the last half of the 20'th century. Even if said devices were strictly restricted to military use in their early days they are now available for all consumers at some pretty reasonable price tags, a very good example being the iGen NV20/20 Night Vision Viewer presented by the people over at SharperImage since the first half of 2007.



The device provides an enhanced level of sensitivity, actually being twice as sensitive as the prior-generation devices using the intensifier tube technology. Moreover, it's extremely easy to use, since the press of a certain button will literally flood the scene in front of the user with invisible infrared light, and sports a 2.6x glass lens (ambient light magnification factor of 650x) which provides a 70-foot (21.33 meters) field of view and a high level of image clarity.



However, the device can do a lot more that allow the user see in the dark. Thus, the iGen NV20/20 Night Vision Viewer is also one of the few night-vision devices that can be connected to a camcorder for real-time video recording. The exposure is adjustable from 2 to 30 frames-per-second to enhance light-gathering capacity, and the device's Infrared Intelligence technology automatically adjusts power for varied levels of darkness.



The device presented by SharperImages comes with its own tripod mount and padded carry case, and provides users with the possibility of choosing the display's brightness level, as well as the color output options. Moreover, it's powered by just 4 AA batteries, which makes it extremely versatile.



The iGen NV20/20 Night Vision Viewer has a $700 price tag, which might seem like a very high price at first sight, but it's actually quite fair if we take into consideration all the features this device has to offer.