15 years ago I had an old back model EQ6. It was an awful sloppy example and due to that I stopped doing astronomy.
Recently I decided to try again. My WO Zenithstar 80, Skywatcher 150 and C9.25 were waiting for a new lease of life.

I began shopping for a new mount. The new breed of EQs look *much* better.
A new EQ5 would do just fine for my visual needs. But an EQ6 isn't much more and has more features.
But what on earth are these new fandangled strain wave mounts for not much more than an EQ6?! Plenty of research later I bought the HAE29.

In the well protected sturdy cardboard box was a note from FLO - "may contain clouds". I had to laugh because it was absolutely pouring down outside.

Inside the box was a small black iOptron "briefcase". I honestly thought I'd been sent the wrong thing - surely it should be bigger?
Nope! It really is compact. Although small it still has a decent mass to it.
No instructions but I'd already downloaded the manuals from iOptrons website.
First I updated the firmware - just follow the steps and it works.
Next was setting it up on the "iOptron 1.5" Tripod for CEM26 / GEM27".

I was surprised this mating of mount and tripod is achieved with just 2 thumbscrews, albeit substantial ones.
Obviously they have plenty of tensile strength so nothing fancy needed here. They work well in practice and actually ease drift alignment - 1 allen key is all you need.
The allen key is included with a nifty strong tiny magnet to stick it to the tripod. Nice touch.

The mount looks and feels well engineered.
The fact I could put my C9.25 on this and no counterweight needed is witchcraft.
But I'm out of practice so the WO 80 was first on.

I've never used GOTO in my life. This is fun! GOTO will help me learn where things are. I've forgotten.
The speed the mount moves from one object to another is impressive. It feels confident and assured as it captures the target.
The noise is a total non issue. The "loudest" is when the mount does GOTO as it's doing it 100% speed 512x or more.
But for manual direction changes using 4x - 64x it's very quiet.
When just tracking you need to get quite close to hear it whirring.
It's certainly not the "coffee grinder crunch" - more a whine from low to high depending on speed.

I've been solar observing with it the last few weeks here in the cloudy UK.
My first drift alignment for 15 years went well - never used the sun for that. A compass under the tripod got me in the rough direction first.
Once I set the hand controller to "track Sun" it showed me a warning about the dangers of doing that. Nice touch.
My new Quark was in place so I continued.
The mount kept the sun dead center for the 4 hours I was out there. I was thoroughly impressed with the mount and my drift alignment.

Can it track sub arcsecond - no idea. I didn't buy it for that.

I bought it because I wanted a well engineered trust-worthy mount that was reasonably portable, had GOTO, had wifi for remote control, had a respected pedigree, and would get me back into astro by relatively easy solar viewing.
I can certainly do that with an EQ but for not much more money I can get a taste of some fascinating technology. Less trips from garden to house to get stuff. No hernia from lugging it. Far easier for me to set up.
The extra cost was worth it for those factors alone.

Plus I've waited 15 years - I didn't want to spend another one waiting for reviews of these new to market mounts.
Yes there was trepidation parting with my hard earned cash - normally it'd need a healthy amount of positive reviews to do that.
But iOptron have suddenly put their cards on the table revealing a royal flush of strain wave mounts.
That gives me confidence they've done their R&D and know what they're doing.

For me this mount ticks all the boxes. A whole hearted 5/5.