Celestron22481 StarSense Explorer 130mm Tabletop Dobsonian Smartphone App-Enabled Telescope Works with StarSense App to Help You Find Nebulae, Planets & More – iPhone/Android Compatible

Awesome first telescope, even with cloudy skies we could find some star clusters with starsense. If you can score the 150mm for under 500 grab it! Recommend getting the svbony zoom eye piece if your a newbie and maybe a 32mm finder eyepiece. It's light enough to pick up and move around fairly easily but heavy enough to be stable very stable. Assembly isn't that difficult if you're competent. If you can't figure out how to assemble it there's very little hope for you figuring out how to get starsense working and actually find objects ha. Just make sure to remove the brackets that come attached to the scope and attatch them to the mount before locking the scope on to them. Also remember to remove the mirror cover on the starsense mount and get a cheap laser collimator.

I got this telescope as an upgrade to my simpler telescope from the same brand, and I was impressed by its quality. I feel it is quite easy to use. (The app and the computer program are also pretty awesome, and they make everything much easier to see and to make sense of!)The assembly part was fairly easy, but the instruction manual is not very helpful. That would be my one criticism of the product.It is very sturdy, and the base sets easily on a table or the ground. It is stable, and the view angle is adequate and easy to adjust. The lens that came with it and we got some great viewings of the moon and planets.This item was not cheap but I feel it delivers great quality for the money.

Awesome telescope and easy to set up.

Absolutely amazing! Perfect for a beginner. It comes collimated . Learn what that means before you buy one of these. To me, it’s not hard, but you might not want to do the process. Seen Jupiter and its moons. Saturn can’t be seen yet for me. Location thing not product.

The setup takes a few hours to assemble right out of the box. The instructions could have been better. They need a good set of orientation pictures at better angles. The only trouble I had with the assembly was that the holes that were predrilled were drilled too short. An easy fix to this problem was with a hand drill. I took the 150mm Celestron out for a test after assembly and found that it worked as expected. The lenses were just ok! And, I will be buying Possel lenses with better eye relief. The moons of Jupiter came in as clear points of light even with the packaged 10mm & 25mm lenses. The focus wheel was a little stiff, but a drop oil helped. The DOB frame and base are solid and are easy to handle. But, the 150mm DOB table top is a little heavy. So, if you are thinking about the weight being a problem, then the 114mm desktop DOB might be a better choice. The DOB was on sale at the time I ordered it, and at a discounted price. So for the price I paid it was great.

So this came with missing parts, covered in dust and dog hair, but it's new right Amazon. Wow another "new" object with wear and tear. Everything is backwards also. I put together the stand but everything else came assembled and I just now found out it's backwards. The cellphone holder is upside down. And the eye piece is so close to it u can barely get ur head in to see it. And it's more proof it was previously owned because Celestron wouldn't assemble a telescope backwards. U can see in the pic that everything is screwed up. The only thing I did wrong putting the one board on backwards. U can see in the photo.

Why did you pick this product vs others?:This review is for the 114mm, but probably applies to all sizes. Views are good and the app is fantastic. The scope itself is not the highest quality. The mirrors seem fine. The main issue is the focuser is pretty cheap (but functional), only accepts 1.25” eyepieces, no compression ring and cheap thumbscrews.The included EP’s are pretty cheap too so you may want to upgrade. The Celestron zoom is pretty decent for the price. Of course, you can get better but the Celestron zoom is on par with this scope’s quality IMO and won’t break the bank.You will likely want the tripod for this which is gonna be an extra $130 + tax. The tripod is good but is only compatible with this scope (all 3 sizes).If you’re gonna go with this scope, the 150mm would probably be the best choice, but when you add up the tripod and the 150mm cost, it’s getting close to the cost of the 8” dob so consider that.The 8” StarSense is between $800-900 and has a 2” focuser which gives better eyepiece options. It’s a better focuser for sure, but not as good as what you will get on a Apertura or SkyWatcher as it’s not dual speed as-is (it can be upgraded to dual speed for ~$100) and has no compression ring (which is pretty surprising & disappointing for a $800+ scope).At the end of the day, the only reason to get this scope over an Apertura or a SkyWatcher is the StarSense app (which is very nice). Otherwise, those brands will get you better hardware for the money.

Value for the price is incredible for what comes out of the box. The first thing my daughter saw was Jupiter and it's moons. The assembly was awful as mine didn't come with instructions or parts list and finding this particular models instructions wasn't the easiest thing to do requiring a slow tedious process of using a third party website riddled with ads to look at the pdf page by page. This also comes with an app that I think comes with code in the provided paperwork so you can make use of the app with all features, but we also can't use that and reaching out to the manufacturers website has produced no response. So if you don't mind detective work and the app not being included, it's still a great telescope.