We're sure many other dealers were also recently blasted with solicitation emails and Instagram messages from relatively unknown people and companies from China advertising Gen 3 White Phosphor tubes. There was an extreme degree of pricing disparity and general lack of information regarding the tubes themselves aside from promised FoM ratings etc. There is conflicting information from different dealers as to the origin of the tubes as well. Some sources say they are refurbished, others say they are new production in a new NNVT facility, and another says they are Russian tube cores with refurbished NNVT power supplies. In general, when something seems too good to be true it probably is, so we sourced these tubes from a legitimate dealer.
We ended up testing a total of 4 tubes. Two were supposed to be 1800+ FoM and two were supposed to be 1600+ FoM, all autogated white phosphor.
What we ended up with were:
Part Numbers: GIII18CW-1 (1600 FoM) and GIII18CW-2 (1800 FoM)
| Tube 1 | Tube 2 | Tube 3 | Tube 4 | |
| SNR | 28.08 | 28.72 | 26.13 | 25.37 |
| Res | 68 lp/mm | 68 lp/mm | 64 | 64 |
| FoM | 1909 | 1953 | 1672 | 1624 |
| Gain | 12722 | 12722 | 12106 | 12096 |
Note that the Gain numbers for Tubes 1 and 2 are identical and think about how unlikely that would be
Impressions and Assembly:
First thing that we found sus was that despite ordering two different tube types, all four tube spec sheets were serialized consecutively. However we proceeded with careful optimism, because an affordable and commercially available (not smuggled) Gen 3 white phosphor option would be very welcome to the market.
We did not document everything from the beginning, as our intention was to try the tubes and not to write an article about them. But the absolutely apalling build quality forced us to write this as a PSA, as this is either a borderline scam or an actual scam.
Our first order of business was building a binocular system to try out tubes 1 and 2. The tubes themselves looked externally not too different from NNVT tubes we have seen in the past. There were some small details that looked different, namely the depth of the power plates. The top section of the tube body is typically smooth, but on these they were slightly textured. Identification markings were crooked.
Our first issue arose when the amount of dust that was on the tube was very difficult to clean (NNVT tubes always come dusty and require cleaning before use). It turns out that much of the "dust particles" were actually divots and other imperfections in the image plate and thus permanent. The front of the tubes also had scratches. This was the first sign of poor build quality.
The tubes also had many small spots marked on the spec sheets. It turned out that most of those spots were actually just bits of potting (glue) that splashed on to the image screen during manufacturing or refurbishing but we were able to clean most of it off with solvent. There was also a sginificant amount of potting that oozed into the edge of the image screen and affected the shape of the image, but this was manageable with a razor blade and some solvent. Pure amateur hour though.
Testing and Performance:
First impressions aside, performance testing was not good either. Contrast was low and felt foggy, resolution was worse than NNVT-5. Image quality was on par with some of our non gated NNVT-4s from 2022, not even on par with our current inventory of NNVT-4. The performance was so underwhelming that we felt no need to compare with anything above a basic ECHO.
Within 15 minutes of use, Tube 2 failed and went black except for a corner. This is when we drew the line and started documentation.
Resolution:
The resolution is worse than both NNVT-5 and Photonis ECHO. Low light is brighter but it looks to be because the EBI is insanely high, not because it produces a better useable image.
None of the test tubes were hand selected, the NNVT-5 and ECHO were randomly selected from our inventory.
| GIIICW18C | NNVT-5 | ECHO | |
| SNR | 28.08 | 24.02 | 26.69 |
| Res | 68 lp/mm | 68 lp/mm | 72 lp/mm |
| FoM | 1909 | 1633 | 1914 |
| Gain | 12722 | 10400 | 9369 |
Test Setup:
Sony A7R5
Sony/Zeiss 35mm F2.8
100 ISO
1/5 Shutter
F4
All units were built into Carson/Noctis housings with Fujinon objectives and eyepieces.
Tested on Hoffman Engineering ANV-126A at 1.500 mfL
All units manually focused using magnified diopter scope.
As can be seen, the "Gen 3" tube produces a very hazy image with a lower resolution than even a NNVT-5 budget tube, and is easily outperformed by a Photonis ECHO.
500 ISO
1/5 Shutter
F4
0.628 mfL
1000 ISO
1/5 Shutter
F4
0.006 mfL
GIII18CW
NNVT-5
ECHO
We should have taken brighter pictures, but at this point we do not want to edit them to skew results. As can be seen, the "Gen 3" is a bit brighter but is significantly noisier and the brightness comes from more background noise, not a better image. The overall resolving power is lower, than even the NNVT-5, with the ECHO coming out on top.
Note that the GIIICW18 "Gen 3" consistently has more noise despite being listed as higher SNR than the rest.
Outright Scam?
Alright, here's the real joke. After testing the GIII18CW-2 which were supposed to be higher FoM, we took out the GIII18CW-1 which were supposed to be 1600+ FoM.
Have you ever seen tubes so well matched for binos that even the serial numbers are the same? This is pretty damning evidence that all of their test data is either so poorly kept that they should not be recognized as legitimate, or they are straight up falsified.
Conclusions:
While I cannot ascertain whether these are truly Gen 3 tubes, I cannot in any good conscience recommend anyone to purchase these. We bought them with the intention of testing them and carrying them. We wanted to like them, we wanted them to be good. Instead, we are writing this warning to hopefully prevent others in the night vision community from falling victim to this scam. Our conclusions are:
- These are probably refurbished tubes
- They are not reliable
- They perform at the same level as our entry level tubes and are outperformed by any intermediate tube
- We are leaning to believe the spec sheets are completely falsified
- Not worth the cost
Note: Gen 3 only denotes the use of a Gallium Arsenide photocathode and does not necessarily correlated with overall tube quality. It is a common misconception that anything Gen 3 is always better. We do not have the equipment to determine the photocathode type so we cannot determine if these are just extremely low quality Gen 3 tubes, or if they are relabelled Gen 2.
We are certain that at some point Chinese manufacturers will make real Gen 3 tubes that are actually good. The difficulty is just sifting through the garbage.
