Bought one for my 65 th birthday this November took a week to arrive but when it did didn’t open till day after
Good packaging no damage to anything which was good
Easy to put together if you ready instructions first follow them and should be ok , Sod’s Law no clear sky for me yet but have managed to marry both lenses
Was slits stuck on the balancing side but a what on there u tube blog and good to go can’t wait

Have only had this for several days but I am already very impressed with it! Views of the moon and M13 globular cluster were sharp as a hypodermic needle with fantastic contrast and resolution, something large refractors are known for. The EQ3 mount I bought with it was just a little shaky but not problematic, takes about 7 seconds for heavy vibrations to fade completely.

Moving to the focuser, I was very surprised how smooth it was out of the box, despite the metal rack being coated in that nasty "Chinese gunk". I cleared it up and put lithium grease on the focuser and focusing is very smooth even with heavy 2 inch eyepieces on the back, so I can get rid of my dual speed focuser as I simply don't need to upgrade the stock focuser.

The 2 inch stock diagonal wasn't actually that bad in terms of image quality. I highly recommend upgrading the MA eyepieces that come with it but they will give you your first initial views.

All in all if you're patient with equatorial mounts this telescope is great for a first time introduction to astronomy. I definitely recommend it.

Bought as a first-time telescope and mount. Viewing has been somewhat limited due to a lot of cloud, but views of the Moon and Orion Nebula in particular have been wonderful. The chromatic aberration around larger stars and Mars has been noticeable (less so around the Moon), but is not apparent enough to be a concern. The telescope has been very easy and fun to use. The EQ5 mount takes some getting used to and also had a few issues on arrival (the declination wheel, despite being "factory set" was off by 45 degrees but was easily corrected; one of the legs was also quite stiff), however once I'd learnt to polar align it properly it is a lot more enjoyable to use and is more than strong enough for this telescope.

I bought this about a month ago and couldn't be happier. I have only got to use it twice but the views of the moon and Jupiter and it's four Galilean moons where amazing, I only noticed very slight chromatic aberration with it too. I bought it with the eq-5 mount which is very sturdy and is ore than capable of handling the telescope.

eq5 mount is heavy, and cumbersome to drag in and out the house, scope quite good on clusters but does flare at edge of field, good on planets with some color showing on jupiter, false? the only thing lets it down is the focuser rack, a lot of play in it with the 2 inch diagonal on it , but some thin ptfe mouse tape on the inside of the focuser rack smoothed it out and took up the play, and a re greased sorted it. for the money you can get a good 8 inch dob!! but then its a matter of portability.