There are some pretty good night vision photos demonstrating the use of a 10x lens with a PVS-14 monocular at: Morovision Night Vision The photos show the differences of using no night vision vs. a 1x lens (typically comes standard with an NVD), vs. 3x Military Magnifier Lens vs. a 1ox Magnifier Lens. The magnification is for real. It looks like it would be a decent piece of equipment to have in your bag, especially if you were doing surveillance.