Reviews & Ratings for OpticsPlanet Exclusive Celestron PowerSeeker 80EQ Refractor Telescope Package - Telescope 21048 w/ Motor Drive — 40 reviews — Page 1

Out of all my years of star gazing, this has been my best telescope! I recommend this to anyone who needs a telescope that shows great detail and likes to star gazing! What I needed for a cheap price !10 out of 10 recommended!

Celestron makes good products. I have a 9.25 Evolution, 25x100 Binoculars, 22x66 spotting scope, and all perform well. I actually bought this set up just for the tripod and mount. I have a 72mm Evostar that fits just perfect, And being a little lighter it should track better. Tried the 80mm out on the Moon before I switched it out and it gave me nice views of the craters. Long focus travel, crisp focus for a very basic single speed. Gave 4 stars because the tripod is a bit shaky, but I can beef it up. It will work fine for what I want, a light grab and go. T be honest the eye pieces and Barlow aren't worth using. Not an issue, I have a dozen good eye pieces.

As a beginner using a telescope this seems to be a decent beginner scope but I am disappointed in some missing items and non-functioning motor.

One of the screw/knobs used to mount the scope to the mounting device on the tripod was missing from the contents. I am not able to securely mount the scope without this crucial piece of hardware.

The motor was stripped out on arrival. You can hear the motor turning internally but the drive rod that would actually turn the scope would not turn.

I bought this for the telescope OTA. I knew going in the mount, eyepieces, finder and the rest were of very low quality. The eq mount has an 1/8th inch of play in the RA axis which equates to 1/2 an inch play at the end of the scope, surprisingly to me the tripod itself isn't the unsteady part. The finder is marginal, there is only one semi-usable eyepiece (20mm) and the 3X barlow must have been included as a bad joke. Why the 4 stars? It's a great 80mm F/11 OTA on par with the Chinese Vixen 80mm F/11 scope for less than half the cost. I would bet the two scopes come off the same assembly line. If you're an experienced amateur with a mount, finder, diagonal and eyepieces and want a decent refactor OTA this is a great deal. If you need to buy the accessories needed you could equip this scope with similar accessories to the vixen for about 50 bucks less than the vixen costs.The mount is barely usable and is sure not to last more than a year, the most powerful usable eyepiece for this scope would be a 6mm or 150x on very bright objects such as planets and the moon. So,I'm happy with my purchase, I feel I got a fantastic deal on a very good OTA and a few items that should only reside in a landfill.

i have always loved the celestrons products until known, that im an owner i love it, i bought it for my 9 year old daughter and we love it so much, we are reading the tags on these sattelights in space its so much fun i feel like a kid again, thank you so much

I gave this telescope/mount package five stars because, in spite of the "cons" listed below, the value per dollar spent is quite good and easily compensates for the relatively small quibbles I have. Most experienced amateurs will notice the following about this telescope/mount package:

Things that are included, but are basically useless due to lack of quality:
image correcting diagonal (prismatic, I think: a big no-no on a decent scope)
3x Barlow (very cheaply made and far too magnifying to be of any real use)
4mm eyepiece (poor optics + high magnification = frustration)

Things that are included, but are only marginally useful:
20mm eyepiece (meh, not bad; you'll have some pleasurable viewing)
finder scope (well, it's okay for now, but maybe replace when funds allow)

Potential buyers of this scope/mount package should keep these things in mind when shopping. The inclusion of junk components like terrible eyepieces and finders in otherwise excellent scope packages is a very common practice and is true also of middle-high end packages costing as much as $800 (at higher prices, there is typically nothing at all included). Having said that, the problems here are very easily and cheaply solved, especially since the rock-bottom price of this package leaves one with a lot of change in one's pocket.

My suggestion is to purchase a star diagonal, quality 2x Barlow, and a quality Plössl eyepiece in the 20-30mm range. The...
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Just opened the box at Christmas...great surpeise. Then, as I unpacked the cpmponents I immediately felt grease on my fingers. wiped it off, and now wonder what leaked and whene does the telescope break down? Next, I discovered one of the knobs that secure telescope to mount was missing. Quality control sucks, and viewing anything on Christmas morning was not to happen. How screwy can you get? Calling now to have you send a replacement knob (still don"t know about grease leak). Will respond after phone call.

This is a nice, if heavy, scope. The weight is actually to its advantage as my kids are always wanting to grab the eyepiece to get a peek, and the heft to the scope keeps it on target long enough for them to see the intended view. I do appreciate having a larger objective for some of the less bright objects, but it might be nice to have a 32mm eyepiece for a little wider view. As many have commented, the tripod can be shaky, and the equatorial mount may be a little difficult to lock down at times, but for this package price, I am highly willing to look past that and enjoy this scope for long time with my kids and, possibly, their kids!

I bought the 80EQ to be a grab-n-go scope, and it fits that bill nicely. Accustomed in recent years very easy GoTo mounts, I'm having to adjust to the little RA motor drive. However, it does a good job, too, within its parameters. My first night out, with a 32mm eyepiece the scope resolved Saturn into a pretty little disc with distinct rings, so I think it will be adequate to my intended purpose of easy to carry / easy to set up. The tripod is okay. (The 32mm eyepiece I used to view Saturn the first night is one I already had and is not part of the 80EQ package. If you have better eyepieces or star diagonal, you'll want to use them.)

A nice little scope and a great little price.

So far, no problems with the telescope. I use the lower powered 30MM eyepiece because it focuses much easier. I have tried the 3X tube with both lenses supplied with the telescope but find it much harder to focus. I'm sure all telescopes have the same problem, the more magnification, the harder to focus. So far (with protection of dark screen over front of telescope) I've watched mercury cross in front of the sun and looked at sun spot 2546. I've looked at the craters on the moon so close it looked like you could touch it. I've looked at numerous stars and planets including Jupiter with it's 4 moons, and can't wait for Saturn to become visible.