The Independent Best telescopes....disappointment guaranteed

[lukebl]

Just noticed this article in The Independent with their recommendations for the 9 best telescopes, presumably for beginners.

9 best telescopes

Their 'best buy'  is a 5" Celestron at £599. It's not even a GOTO, but can connect wirelessly to your phone. Let's face it, a beginner is going to be pretty disappointed after they've had reasonable views of the moon, maybe seen the Galilean Moons, just about made out Saturn's rings, and realise that they aren't going to see a wondrous array of colourful galaxies and nebulae after spending £600?

That'll put off anyone new to the hobby. I wonder who writes these reviews. You could do so much better for a lot less than £600.

[Ibbo!]

Yes i read that last night and thought "who wrote that never tried a scope out"

[JamesF]

"it has a wide field of view, which is perfect for offering up quality images of the more distant planets and their moons"

Errm.

James

[Grant]

The worse bit is this:

Quote

Technology and astrology combine with the Celestron Astro-FI 5, which will give you a guided tour of the heavens and deliver the farthest stars and galaxies directly into your front room.

That tells you everything you need to know about the quality of that article...

[lenscap]

1 minute ago, Grant said:

Technology and astrology combine with the Celestron Astro-FI 5, which will give you a guided tour of the heavens and deliver the farthest stars and galaxies directly into your front room.

I've never had much success observing from my front room.

Perhaps I should have opened the curtains. ?

 

[Stu]

It is pretty disappointing isn't it? A bit of a rogues gallery of not very inspiring or just plain dodgy scopes! Heritage 100P deserves to be there though.

[Davey-T]

Must be getting near Christmas, lot's of scopes that will get used once then gather dust or end up on EB.

Talking of Christmas ASDA have advent calendars on sale 

Dave

[Ant]

I've written a complaint to them lol

[PaulM]

The writer looks to have the task of writing top 10 articles for a variety of things so will be an expert in none of them

https://www.independent.co.uk/author/jon-axworthy

As for confusing astrology and astronomy haha brilliant 

[FLO]

They didn't ask us ?

[Galen Gilmore]

1 minute ago, FLO said:

They didn't ask us ?

I was about to say...

[lenscap]

These "best buy" columns are just marketing flummery thinly disguised as journalism.

Most of the so-called "quality" papers have them. They should be ashamed.

Because they are not technically "adverts" they can make ridiculous claims that a manufacturer would not dare to utter.

They appeal to people with so much more money than sense, that they will buy any old tat if a media person says it is "cool" or "on-trend".

(End of rant)

[JamesF]

3 minutes ago, lenscap said:

They appeal to people with so much more money than sense, that they will buy any old tat if a media person says it is "cool" or "on-trend".

Right!  That's it then!  I'm off to invent a telescope with a beard-warmer.

James

[FLO]

2 minutes ago, JamesF said:

Right!  That's it then!  I'm off to invent a telescope with a beard-warmer.

Ooh. Can we be your UK retailer? ?

[PeterW]

Beard warmer... see my sig pic.. the infamous “beard head”, (still) available on the inter web! 

Makes you suspicious of other “top 10 best” lists... maybe I am not old and/or cynical enough?

Peter

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

The Geertop AZ: £38.99, Amazon mentioned is a really, really, really bad one. Even a kid can set it up may be true, but nobody can get that particular "mount" (word used without prejudice) to point at anything for any length of time. Too flimsy to use even as a doorstop. The Huygens 6 and 20 mm EPs will be like looking through a straw, especially when combined with a 3x "Barlow Glass". 180x out of a 2" aperture? Granted, I have seen worse: 60mm F/11.7 scopes equipped with an SR 4mm "EP" and a Barlow, to reach 350x.

[pete_l]

At the risk of starting an argument what would the team suggest as their ideal telescope (no binoculars) for £100, £300 or £600 budgets?

Fully working, Straight out of the box.

[Stu]

There is some good stuff in here for beginners.

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/beginner-telescopes.html

I'm not convinced of the merits of small EQ mounts though, I just think they are often flimsy, wobbly and hard to use. I think there is a market for perhaps a refractor equivalent of the 200P dob. I don't mean in aperture, just in pure plonk down useability. Say something like a decent 100mm f10 ish achro on a solid alt az mount as a package for a reasonable price, say £300 or £350. Someone will now come along and tell me there is one

[pete_gamby]

Just a bit of background for you.

We were invited to take part in a round up of binoculars for the IndyBest site by one of its freelance writers. The results are actually not too bad in that review although it was apparent that the author did actually get hold of most if not all the models on review and did also use them for the intended purpose.

He asked us to submit "a suitable pair which our readers might be interested in". No other criteria such as price, type, magnification were specified so we took a punt on a £400 bino. It was up against all sorts from a £99 compact bino to a £1000+ Canon IS.

Shortly after the review was published, the retailer that IndyBest chose to link to for our product started taking orders for the model we submitted. That retailer hadn't sold any of the model in question in the first year of its launch.

The same author as did the binocular review, Aaron Roe, also did a pretty good review on IndyBest for messenger bags.

So it's probably as much about the choice of freelancer as about the poor selection of products, given that it is more or less certain that the manufacturers/retailers chose what to submit.

HTH

Pete

 

 

[Helen]

1 hour ago, Stu said:

There is some good stuff in here for beginners.

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/beginner-telescopes.html

I'm not convinced of the merits of small EQ mounts though, I just think they are often flimsy, wobbly and hard to use. I think there is a market for perhaps a refractor equivalent of the 200P dob. I don't mean in aperture, just in pure plonk down useability. Say something like a decent 100mm f10 ish achro on a solid alt az mount as a package for a reasonable price, say £300 or £350. Someone will now come along and tell me there is one

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/inspire-series-telescopes.html?

I picked up the 80mm version for ~£80 in the Maplins fire sale and I was impressed!  Celestron have really thought these scopes through.  Decent aperture, solid mount, good finder and some really nice touches too.  When you open the box the basic instructions are on the lid in a very user-friendly format.  The light in the tripod head can be remove to be a redlight torch.  And perhaps most surprisingly the lenscap-[removed word]-mobilephone-adapter actually works really well.  This proved to be perfect for what I wanted it for - to lend to a family whose 6-year-old is space mad.  The whole family has taken to it!

Helen

[JTEC]

There’s knowledge, there’s truth ... then there’s journalism.  ?

[JimothyC]

I do hope Tring Astro didn't have to pay to much to get there name included against some products. It's good that they've mentioned an Independent retailer rather than Argos or Jessops, but I doubt they did it out of the goodness of their hearts and I'm not sure it helps TA's reputation to be associated with such bad advice.

[johnfosteruk]

The 

On 04/10/2018 at 13:37, Grant said:

The worse bit is this:

That tells you everything you need to know about the quality of that article...

Perhaps you get an obsy with remote control included! 

[Ags]

I've never seen a "10 Best" article that was worth reading.

On the other hand, @lukebl, you can see an awful lot with a 5" telescope.

[Dave Lloyd]

I noticed one was advertised with a solar filter, I really hope it's not the dreaded glass eyepiece one.