Customer Ratings & Reviews

The manual leaves a lot to be desired. No mention of the on/off on the spotter scope, no mention of how to change battery. The spotter's knurled blots imply finger tight but they have to be tightened with pliers to stop the spotter from moving. Star Sense works OK but use the "night mode" (not mentioned in app} to align it and the telescope. Turn on "night mode" - check box at bottom of screen on phone - aim at moon - center and you're good to go. There is enough movement in the telescope / mount / altitude adjuster that it is very difficult to keep alignment so much so that the barlow lens is all but useless - by the time you install it the telescope will have shifted enough that you target will be lost. All in all, it works sorta of.

Overall the telescope is good. A few things to consider… the app does not work well with the positioning of the telescope and some parts on this scope break a bit easy. I used mines very rarely and have the parts glued with superglue which makes it work. Overall pretty decent scope. :/

A gift for my husband's birthday, and he was so happy to receive this particular telescope! So many telescopes to choose from, but after researching and reading other reviews, this telescope is lightweight and seemed the easiest to use and set up. Best of all it comes with an app to help you manually direct to objects viewable in your sky, via your phone without internet or wifi. The alignment was a snap and the clarity is fantastic. Both my husband and I love this telescope!

This telescope was the best birthday present I bought my son! Hooks up perfectly to the cell phone and is 100% user friendly! I was unsure with the price but it was 110% worth it. Can’t put a price on quality time with my son.

This my first telescope. Very pleased with it. Easy to assemble. The smart phone guidance works great. One small issue is the finder scope. It uses a small disc battery. I forgot to turn the switch off, And it went dead in just a couple of days. No big deal, just annoying. Also, I have not been able to find any information on how to maintain the telescope. I'm sure it will eventually need some readjustment on mirror, etc.

Easy to set up and easy to use.can see stars planets, pretty cool.

Best ever gift for my son easy to assemble and use

I got this to get back into stargazing, which I used to do as a little kid. This is shockingly good for the money. Was able to seem Jupiter, stripe, satellites, and all, on my first time out with it. The craters of the moon are so crisp you can almost feel them. Had a really good time, and my friend and I had passed two hours tinkering, viewing, and photographing before we knew it.

I bought this for my teenage son who has an interest in astronomy but not a ton of experience using telescopes. He absolutely loves it and it is tough to get him to come inside as he could play with this telescope for many hours. He is able to view and identify everything than he is looking for and did a great report in science class about his findings. His teacher was very impressed!

I had higher expectations for this telescope, especially the app that is supposed to guide you through the sky. Other than the moon, I wasn’t sure if I was looking at the object the app said I was locked on to. The tripod isn’t as stable as I would prefer, either. On the positive side, it was very easy to assemble. The next telescope will be computerized so I can have more time viewing and less time finding.

This telescope provides good value for money for a beginner like myself. With the provided eyepieces you can easily see craters and rushed in the moon. I could see Jupiter as a ball with at least 3 moons. Saturn shows as ball with a line through it. All from a suburban backyard. StarSense is very practical to find your way around. The limitations show when trying to do fine adjustments. There is no fine control over rotation and there is “play” like in an old car. That is when you want to make small adjustments in high magnification the position either jumps or bounces back.

I bought this from Best buy a few days ago, and have hand 2 nights to use it for a few hours. First, let me say this, Im very experienced with telescopes, observing, Astrophotography etc. Astronomy is my passion and I own probably a dozen serious telescopes, tripods, mounts, accessories, astro cameras etc. I would not recommend this telescope. Ill start with the good, the Optical tube itself isnt bad at all. the optics arent bad, the focuser, although plasticy, is smooth and accepts larger 2" eyepieces and the 5" f/5 mirror offers some pleasing wide field views, and does decently well on the lunar, planetary, and brighter deep sky objects. The app itself, Star Sense Explorer, is really cool, its the best part of the whole package. it can be a little buggy but in general, its very accurate, and allows you to locate tons of objects with ease. The Bad: the tripod/ mount aren't great.. although it does have slow motion controls which is a plus, its cheap feeling, made of plastic, its shaky, with vibration taking a long time to settle down, and wost of all, probably the deal breaker for me, is that the telescope can not point to Zenith.. or anywhere near it.. the scope maxes out at maybe 70°, hitting the tripod. this blocks the scope from viewing a huge portion of the sky, the darkest and clearest part of it.. which is absolutely unacceptable for an astronomical telescope. The mount simply doesn't work with this optical tube. The accessories are also pretty poor.. a 25mm and 10mm Kellner, made with cheap plastic barrels, while my work acceptably well in a slower refractor, are heavily abberated and very poor performers in an f/5 Newtonian. Coma, and field curvature smear out stars everywhere but the exact center of view. Overall, the decent tube and good app are nullified by poor accessories and a completely incompatible tripod. Im may just use the OTA on another mount and adapt the star sense dock to another telescope. If you want a real telescope, buy from a telescope dealer. The new 8"-10" dobsonian versions of this series would be far far better, certainly worth the extra few hundred.

Purchased as a birthday gift for 11-y/o Grandson interested in astronomy. After much research determined this was the best quality beginner telescope I might find. The child LOVED it maybe just a little bit more than his parents! Good quality, easy to set up, and the stargazing feature (cell phone sky mapping) is a perfect addition. Very glad for this purchase.

Great telescope for beginners. The assembly was a little tricky but do check out YouTube tutorials before assembling.

My family loves this telescope so far. Bought a travel bag on amazon and took it to Yosemite with us and got to see a couple of shooting stars whiz through our sights. Precision adjustments, east side viewing, and nice app to aide in locating viewable points of interest

Why does jupiter look blurry with the 25mm eyepiece and the 10mm even though i put the 2x barlow lens. does my telescope need to be collimated? Observation date & time 1/7/2023 9-10pm

Some problems with the app, it was not alligned with the star map. Otherwise decent.

Good scope.. but for this price one can get many more features even within celestron brand. The app they provide ( which supposedly finds objects in sky from your phone ) is a nightmare to calibrate.. .. The plate resolve tech they use in the app needs a computer not a phone. It lags like anything!! Be aware that the mechanism of clipping the phone to the scope and the pointing to an object (via a 90 degree mirror they provide ) has too much room for error.. There are just too many moving parts. So no matter what you do you are almost always fat off from the target.. and it might get quite frustrating if you are a beginner. It’ll take you close to an object but realistically you would have to do quite a bit of work. The tripods are light and even the tiniest of vibration is amplified.. But thats what you’d get for this price. Counter weights are recommended especially if you are outside and its windy.. The lens is pretty good imo. The views of moon were amazing, and clearly visible Saturn rings. Try going outside the city to really appreciate this scope. My recommendation is to go with a scope with an inbuilt goto system for this price if thats what you want, else get something with similar aperture (or even 90mm) without any goto system. There is no point in paying for a goto system such as this one because its far from useful.. In general, Reflectors begin to standout at around 8inch aperture... So I can’t see a very good reason to spend so much money on just a 130mm reflector..

Great beginner telescope to use and learn. The app dosent work properly ony phone, but other than that it works amazing!

Good telescope, mediocre eyepieces with little eyerelief. Have been able to view Jupiter and Saturn with them but lots of chromatic aberration. Will replace eyepieces. The starsense software is excellent though and can assist in figuring out what's viewable in even a light polluted sky. Please learn about viewing objects in night sky and what is possible where you live before having unreasonable expectations of what telescope can view.