With Amazon Prime, I got it in two days. But then it sat for a few weeks waiting for a night without rain or clouds. Tonight was finally it, kind of. A nearly full moon, but a lot of wispy clouds up there after sunset, giving me only about 15 stars to reference my location from. Toss on top of that the cold temps meant I wanted to stay home, not drag my poor son out somewhere farther in the country away from this much ambient light so we were left on my back patio, with my house blocking about 30% of the available sky. Between being in my back yard in a suburban neighborhood, lots of ambient light, neighbors with back patio lights on, and the clouds, I didn't even tell him I was setting it up out there because I fully expected it to not be able to determine its location. I got it in place, powered it up (I hate the battery pack, more about that later), and told it to figure out where it was. I came back inside to warm up and watch some TV with him while it whirred away out there. A couple minutes later I went out there and watched the controller, where it talked about what percentage of that part of the sky it finished scanning, and at one point I saw it say "not enough stars." I thought, "Yep, I figured as much." And I was ready to cart it back in, but it kept going. I guess that message meant that one part it tried to reference didn't have enough stars, so it went to another portion of the sky. All told, even with all the clouds, it took it less than 4 minutes to figure out where it was. Just the fact that it said it was ready was impressive, so I thought let's see how it actually does. The moon is nearly full, not too far over the roof of my neighbors house, so I grabbed the controller and told it to go to the moon.
Now, I had not read the instructions, so that's a good sign that this system is pretty easy to use and very intuitive for the controls. There's also a "Back" button that makes things almost like traversing directories in a computer. You get to a point in the control menu, then just hit "back" to go up one level. So when I was doing "solar system" and wanted to then try "deep space" I couldn't just hit Deep Space while at Solar System, I had to hit "back" first. Easy enough once you work it out.
So I said "Moon" and it moved itself there. Wasn't quite spot on, but the moon was in the field of view so that was a win for me. I was using the lower power eyepiece at first, so the moon only filled up about 60 or 70 percent of it. Nice and crisp though. Got my son out, and he thought it was the coolest thing. I then swapped out to the high power eyepiece, and I was VERY surprised. The field of view could not even cover the whole moon, just part of it, it was so large. As I said, it was not QUITE a full moon, and I was amazed when I looked at the edge, the magnification was so much, and it was so clear, that I could see the edges of craters against the edge like mountains, with the black of space behind them. The clarity of the craters was just mind numbing, and seeing them like that rising above the edge of the disc like mountains was just something I hadn't expected from such a relatively small and inexpensive scope. And there are better eyepieces you can buy for this still, so I'm looking forward to seeing just what this baby can do.
With the cloud cover, I couldn't get at the deep space objects, or even most of the stars. But with the surprising magnification of the moon, I'm getting more power than I had anticipated, so I'll be happy when the skies clear. I already know I'm not going to see Neptune as some large body like the moon, I just want to see some of the things I can.
The motor noise is noticeable, but not annoying. Slight whirr/click as it tracks objects for you as well.
The base is surprisingly steady, and includes a level. It has the typical mostly useless "shelf" under the scope.
Now, the battery pack is a piece of junk. Totally useless, and the first thing I'm going to try to find a better alternative for. It's just this poorly formed plastic junk that holds all the D cell batteries in it, and it's not even shaped well enough to let them TOUCH the contacts at the positive end on two spots because the springs aren't even tough enough to push the batteries up against them vs. the slight tension from the unit as a whole on the batteries. Toss on top of that there's no place designed to hold the battery pack. You can place it on the little shelf but then you're not going to be using it for anything else... Best thing I found so far was to take the little loop on the bag and hang it over the autofinder barrel that does the star sensing when it's powered up. But even then as the scope traverses it bumps against the tops of the tripod legs. Horrible design.
Focus knobs move very smoothly though, and are geared well so there's some fine focusing available.
As long as you realize you won't see Pluto other than a faint light, and that the things you see from the Hubble aren't the same things you'll see from here, this is a surprisingly good scope, especially if you want to skip the part that's half the fun for regular astronomers, finding things yourself. The fact that even in the most sub-optimal conditions, my back yard, neighbors with lights on, clouds, yet it still found where it was quickly, was enough for me to realize this was going to be a good buy.
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Living in the consumer electronics age, it is extrememly difficult to get kids to patiently wait for Dad to fiddle with the telescope for hours in order to see an interesting feature of the night sky. This is a great way to get them hooked early. Put it outside and flip the switch and it aligns itself. From there, you simply select the object you want to see. Orion's Nebula? Done. Jupiter and its moons? Done. It works really well!Once your kid sees what they can't see with their naked eyes, they are likely to get hooked on this hobby--along with developing a deeper understanding of the sky, of telescopes and of astronomy in general. But if your kid's first experience is frustrating and boring--they're not likely to give it a second go.
Personally, I would not pay $500 for this telescope though the skysense technology really works well. The scope that is included is pretty good--and for what I paid, I am very happy ($229). I can use this mount with more capable telescopes that I have. I don't want to talk too much trash about the included scope--it's preety good for a starter--but $500, skysense or no skysense, is a little steep.
Nonetheless--the closest thing out there to this is Meade's 6" Cassegrain on the Light Switch mount for something like $1500. It's a better scope on a much sturdier tripod. But if your goal is to hook your kids on astronomy without blowing their inheritance this is the current cheapest, simplest solution out there.
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I bought this scope because it will align itself ;this is great for someone not good at recognizing the stars by name.It met my expectations .The supplied scope tube can be removed and other dovetail mounted lightweight scope tubes used ,which is very nice.
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