Hello All. First time poster. Have just signed up after spending many hours browsing and finding this place a very helpful resource. I stumbled into astronomy recently, having bought my soon to be 5 year old daughter a telescope. She has very keen interest in space and the planets, which she inherited from me. Although despite that interest I've never really looked at astronomy. Now I've spent more time with it than she has! It is a Celestron Travelscope 70 DX and came with a handy backpack and everything else to get started. It presumably is quite a poor telescope, but it was £25 brand new in a clearance sale so seemed worth a punt. Size-wise it works quite well for her too.
Now that i've had a taste I would like to get something a bit more useable for myself. I'd planned to spend around £200-250 and after a bit of research, the SkyWatcher Explorer 130 seems a good place to start, but I'm torn between 2 different versions - the 130PS with AZ5 mount and tripod or the 130P Synscan AZ GOTO. I've seen a few comparisons of both but only in relation to other scopes, not each other. Haven't seen anything that explains what the 'S' stands for in the first version. I'm leaning to the AZ5 version as it is £80 cheaper, available now and would seem a better choice if I wanted to pop out for an hour with my daughter. Even if travelling solo I don't think I'd be planning whole evenings around stargazing (yet) so it's more about portability and being able to easily get setup. The GOTO system does look intriguing but is it worth the extra money (I assume I'd also need to invest in something like a powertank which is more cost)? I do like the idea of just tapping a button and being able to see different objects, but is it hard to locate objects with a 'manual' scope such as the AZ5? One thing I've noticed with the small scope we already have is that once I've acquired something in my eyepiece, if I dare to tighten up the tripod adjustment arm it moves enough to lose it! I would hope the AZ5 has a more refined method of moving and honing in on objects. I've linked to the 2 scopes below;
https://www.firstlightoptics.com/sky-watcher-az5-deluxe/sky-watcher-explorer-130ps-az5-deluxe.html
https://www.firstlightoptics.com/az-goto/skywatcher-explorer-130p-synscan-az-goto.html
Appreciate any feedback or suggestions.