Cheaters! I ordered a telescope for a child and only the base arrived without the telescope. They didn't send everything, they don't reply to messages, I'm waiting until Monday, if nothing changes, I'm reporting the matter to the police.

By chance I watched the starlink satellites go over the farm where I live in a perfect evenly spaced line. Utterly incredible. I decided to buy a scope and searched for the best at a certain price. This scope came up time and time again. Along with a couple of books and a planisphere I had high hopes. I'm used to rifle optics and focusing was simple. Got some great views of the moon in detail but when I looked at stars there are just more stars!... Am I missing something?. Not sure what I expected, wildebeest crossing majestically across the sky or the starship enterprise docking with the international space station?. But really, I am disappointed with thousands of stars. My point being is , I rushed into this and on reflection (reflection!! See what I did there) I should have done more research. I think your average non geek is going to be slightly bored after twenty minutes looking at the moon and countless stars. I'm sure I'm missing something and need to put more effort in but my scope will probably join the thousands of other scopes collecting dust. Try before you buy is my advice

I ordered this on Tuesday before they reopened from Christmas I received it two days from them opening I must admit they are a first class company great customer service great prices I’ve seen a lot of bits I need to buy so I will definitely be ordering from them again thank you

Wow fast delivery, well packaged, great price ,very happy with service and purchase . FLO will be the first place I will come to when looking for Astro gear . Thank you so much .

Have had this scope for nearly a year now, used it many dozens of times, and am very happy with it – it’s a perfect first ‘serious’ scope. It arrived well out of collimation, and collimating the secondary was a steep learning curve – it would be best to do some reading up on this before getting any kind of Newtonian, if only to avoid blind panic! Since then, it has held its collimation very well.
I soon found the technique for ‘nudging’ it around the sky, and am now happy with the Teflon bearings, though at higher magnifications it can be a bit frustrating at times. With its heavy base and low centre of gravity it is rock steady. Vibrations settle very quickly indeed, and even a bit of wind doesn’t really affect it. Though the whole thing weighs around 20kg, I find that with the tube vertical and the handles screwed tight, I can easily move the whole thing by lifting with the handles and shuffling along – and I’m a ten stone weakling in my sixties!
While the base and tube are satisfyingly good, the accessories are less so. The straight-through finder is hard work, and soon got replaced by a right angled, fully corrected one, along with a red dot finder. You can then use the RDF to get to a visible object you know, the 9x50 to see a 5 degree field and get the scope centred for a 25mm-ish eyepiece. The supplied eyepieces are poor, worse than poor if you wear glasses. The 25mm is useable for a while but the 10mm is terrible.
One thing I discovered after a bit is that you can create a sort of alt-az version of an azimuth setting circle on the base, and get a cheap magnetic inclinometer to put on the tube. If you then get an app like sky-safari or stellarium which gives you instantaneous alt-az coordinates for any object in the sky, you can ‘set’ the scope to a precise alt-az position, which makes it incredibly easy to find difficult-to-see objects without excessive ‘star-hopping’. This has saved me so much time, and would be my most recommended ‘hack’.
In these 10 months or so I’ve seen dozens of galaxies and planetary nebulae, along with hundreds of open and globular clusters, as well as ‘resolving’ many, many double stars.
All in all, this 200p dobsonian is a highly recommended buy, but remember you will need to budget for some decent eyepieces, and a better finder. It might be worth looking at the more expensive Stellalyra version, or the GSO equivalents, as there is a version of these with a better finder, and better bearings, along with a two speed focuser. It cost £100 more though.

We have only been using this telescope (the first we have bought) for 2 days but it has already exceeded all expectations. Delivery (international) was very fast and the telescope itself is very well built.

The Moon is glorious (the Astro Essentials Moon filter is a highly recommended accessory for starters). Last night we managed to see Jupiter with some moons, including clearly visible coloured bands on Jupiter. All this from our back garden, under strong street lighting and with Jupiter low in the sky.

The two included lenses are really great for starters and the advice, found on many forums, to start with the basic lenses before deciding what type of additional lenses you want, is spot on. Higher zoom is not always good, we find the moon much more spectacular through the 25mm standard lens, where you can see the whole moon in one go. On the other hand, the detail we could make out on Jupiter through and add-on 8mm lens + 2x Barlow was beautiful, even as the planet shot through the field of view in a matter of seconds.

In short, if you are looking for a starter telescope, you will most definitely not be disappointed.

Really great scope, fast and efficient order processing and delivery. Can see Jupiter, orion nebula, andromeda galaxy - bit faint so order Barlow and filters right away, also collimator. Clear skies

Absolutely blown away by this scope and the speed with which it was dispatched! Only looked at the Moon - late afternoon - was breathtaking, Am utterly addicted now and will be casting my eye towards Barlows.......

It took 6 months to arrive, instead of the 2 to 3 months quoted, but I'm sure that was outside FLO's control. Easy to assemble (think easier end of Ikea), although there were a couple of minor discrepancies between instructions and actuality. A bit bigger that I expected, although easy for one person to carry the base and OTA separately and is a matter of seconds to mount the OTA. I'm a relative novice at observing and used it in a moonlight sky in an urban setting so can't fully review performance. Fairly easy to move around the sky. Found it a bit awkward to aim the finder scope at the intended targets, but maybe that will come with experience. Finder scope seems to keep its alignment even when removed from OTA and refitted later. Scope came almost perfectly collimated - have't tried any adjustment. Was easily able to split a 4" double, but 2" double looked like a single oblong. I believe the scope will support considerably higher magnification so making the latter double split possible. All in all, the telescope met my expectations and I would recommend it.

I purchased this for both myself and my father to enjoy back in September, It arrived on time in December (pandemic!) and has had several nights of use. I have to say as a first timer when it comes to telescopes the workforce of FLO have been exceptional. I had a ton of questions and all of them were answered before I even made my purchase, allowing me (as a complete novice) to choose the right scope for me. Never at any point did I feel like I was being 'sold to' Just really good, friendly advice.

The build quality of the scope is fantastic, The scope itself arrived prebuilt just needing the finder scope to be attached along with the handles (all really simple). The base was fairly easy to assemble and only took around 30 minutes to complete. I would advise getting yourself a laser collimator to get the mirrors aligned for the best viewing, the scope comes with a bunch of tools to help assemble it and also has an alan key to adjust the small secondary mirror and a phillips screwdriver for the primary mirror adjustments. You will need a slightly larger alan (hex) key for the primary mirror locking bolts which isn't supplied.

Honestly the most exciting bit of kit I've bought in a few years, excellent views of the moon and the stars. Hoping to see the planets later in the year! Will always come back to FLO to purchase future items.