Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I read through most of the reviews here and in other online forums and here is my take on all of it. The guys in the dedicated astronomy forums are going to tell you these binoculars are junk but then they are also going to suggest that what you really need is something you might have to take a second mortgage out on your home to buy. What this product is - an $89 pair of Chinese binoculars - you should obviously be aware of and I give it four stars because you can't beat the price with a stick. Mine arrived on time and I found them to be well collimated (aligned) If you take care not to bang them around or drop them they should stay that way but it is fairly easy to do a decent conditional collimation on them if necessary, instructions on how to do that can be found online with a Google search. The advantages of these over a telescope is that they can easily be used for terrestrial viewing as well as star gazing. The disadvantages are that they are pretty big and heavy and with 20x magnification you really need to use a tripod but viewing any celestial object higher than about 30 degrees above the horizon with a tripod is going to be rather uncomfortable due to the angle. This is why telescopes have that 45 or 90 degree eyepiece..I also found that with 20x the field of view is pretty narrow to the point that you almost need a spotting scope to get these things aimed at what you want to see. When looking at the moon for instance you are going to physically see it moving across the field of view like the second hand of a clock. For this reason I ordered a heavy duty Celestron alt/azim tripod with slow motion controls because a light weight aluminum camera tripod is not quite up to the task of supporting these monsters. Funny but the tripod cost ten bucks more than the binoculars. So far I have used these to see amazing details on a rising late night half Moon, the moons around Jupiter, the Orion Nebula, Seven Sisters and a few other things. This was from my back yard with quite a bit of light pollution so I wasn't able to find Andromeda galaxy but I'm sure in a dark space I'll be able to get a stunning view. They are also good for terrestrial viewing and especially at night, they bring in a lot of light but you can't focus on anything closer than maybe 100 yards or so. So if you think you're maybe interested in astronomy I'd recommend these binoculars. I can understand Celestron's philosophy in offering such an inexpensive product, kind of like a gateway drug. You'll certainly want to upgrade in the future but it's better than spending $500 on a telescope and then discovering that meh, you're not really into it and it just sits in the corner taking up space in the spare bedroom next to the jogging machine with all the dirty laundry hanging on it.