GreyDay

Okay, i'll have a go at this one but only because i hate seeing such negative reviews. Before i start you should all keep in mind that we're not reviewing a £1000 telescope on a £2000 mount with £350 eyepieces!. It's a cheap chinese telescope aimed at beginners who are under the impression that £100 is a lot to spend on an item that may only be used once then stuck in the loft. They dont understand that what they're actually getting is a full astronomy setup for the price of a TeleVue Plossl, or a few cheap plossls or maybe a good diagonal... get the point? we're reviewing a cheap full setup that can be obtained second hand for less than 50 quid. I've had three of these, i gave two away to friends who wanted to try out astronomy and i kept one as a grab n go. Rocket_the_Raccoon made a few good points that i have to agree with, 1) The Mount, i agree, it's very tail heavy and not precise. When the Alt handle is tightened and you let go, the excess weight at the rear causes the telescope to sag. This can cause the object you're trying to lock onto, to disappear from the FOV. It isn't all bad though, once this has happened a couple of times you find yourself correcting for the sag and it ceases being a problem. So the mount... Useable lightweight and sturdy enough with one caveat, don't extend the legs fully! They're amazingly stable to about half extention but can get a little wobbly beyond that. I'm used to using a SkyTee II on a CG5 tripod for larger scopes but i don't find the Astromaster mount/tripod to be a bad setup for smaller scopes. 2) The red dot finder.. On two out of three Astromasters that ive had the red dot is too bright and renders the finder useless unless you turn the LED off. One way a friend overcame this was to dab the small drilled point that reflects the led with some lens blackening paint.(the sort boy racers use to make their tail light clusters look smoked) As this stuff blocks around 50% of the light it sort of fixes the problem. At this point i'll defer to Rocket's opinion.. the finder is the achilles heel on the Astromaster though not something that cant be fixed. 3)The Diagonal... This is where i have to disagree the most! The Amici prism diagonal is an absolute godsend to beginners. It's the right way up! it's the right way round! what you see through the telescope is what you see in a star chart! theres no reversed image to contend with, no questions like "why do the stars go left when i turn right?" "why doesnt it look like the pictures i've seen?" "Is this star atlas printed backwards?" The prism isn't "Undersized" it allows all the light a 1.25" field stop can take! I've tried comparing the celestron diagonal to others using a 32mm EP and didn't see any loss in light transfer. Amici's can throw up the vertical line that appears as a ghostly shimmer but then again far less obtrusive than edge distortion from a widefield ep in a fast apo without a flattener. It's a cheap diagonal and far more user friendly, i would also suggest far superior to a $10 mirror!!! The secondary on my SW200p isn't perfectly optically smooth under DPAC so what sort of mirror do you get for $10? enough said. 4)The Eyepieces... Again i agree with Rocket, They're useable and cheap to replace, To be honest the choice of cheap plossls is staggering. an extra outlay of 50 quid will get a couple of extra ep's and a cheap barlow. I do prefer the SW MA ep's that come with their cheap scopes over the celestrons. So, Not much to add over Rocket's review except i would recommend the Astromaster to a beginner! All the things that lower it's quality are the reason they're so cheap to buy, astronomy is one of the true hobbies where "you get what you pay for" really rings true. I've bought cheap stuff and been both disappointed and surprised by the quality, same goes for expensive gear too! But i have to stand up for the Astromaster and say it's good for the price, the last one i bought i got for £30!. I've got to admit that when i first tried one of these around 10 years ago i wasn't impressed, though after a little use and coming to terms with the shortfalls i began to enjoy it. That may be the curse of cheap telescopes where a beginner may try it once and never use it again, but! look at the Astromaster compared to the nasty 70x350 and 50x350 chinese scopes that are flooding the market and it becomes a real bargain and good value for money.