Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This 70mm refractor has been great fun to use. First, the negative. I give it 4 stars because, as stated in other reviews, the finder scope and the included tripod leave a lot to be desired. I replaced the tripod immediately with a much larger, sturdier tripod with a quick-release. The spotting scope needs to be adjusted constantly; I find it difficult to focus and honestly not much use around any amount of light pollution. Now, the positive: I don't have much trouble finding bright stars by dead reckoning and then hopping from there. I've found the Moon, Jupiter and Saturn with no trouble at all, and what we see there is fantastic! Jupiter's moons and Saturn's rings are beautifully distinct. Mizar A & B and Alcor are easily distinguishable, along with stars down to 10th or 11th magnitude. I also love bird-watching, and the upright image diagonal gives great views of the local avians with a pretty decent near-focus (5.8m) for that purpose. The scope is very light (1.5kg) but seems quite well put together, and assembling it for use is easy and quick. In fact, we realized that it's light and compact enough to fit into a camping backpack, which hopefully means we'll get a LOT of mileage out of it in exotic places. The eyepieces, as someone else mentioned, are standard 1.25" size also used by the much larger scopes I've had my eye on, meaning I'm not afraid to invest in high-quality upgrades. They say the best scope is the one you use most. This scope puts up absolutely no barriers to taking it out to starwatch as much as possible. I was a little hesitant to buy it, but now I really wish I'd bought it a much sooner. Great value for a great price.