Meade etx 125pe - Meade ETX-125 PE UHTC Astro Telescope Premier Edition 125 PE w/ Tripod, AutoStar GOTO Controller. AutoAlign, SmartFinder, AutoStar Suite

I am displeased with meade's etx125. I have been an owner of a meade LX90 for nine years and had wonderful time with the overall performance of the scope from visual to photography. I had reasonable expectations for the 125 PE. I am disapointed in the cheap plastic construction of the finder scope bracket and LNT mount. R.A. locking handle is cheap and flimsy. The R.A. label is cheap and almost unusable. The Level North feature is unreliable and inaccurate. Compared to my Autostar system of my LX90 from 2000, the 125PE with LNT was not able to slew correctly to a target from one part of the sky to another. The so called smart align feature is a joke. Meade should have spent more time in improving the mount and fork arms then the goto programs. The optics on this scope are excellent. Great pinpoint of stars with airey disks. Saturn shows amazing detail at 150x on still nights. I was even able to make out M1 the Crab Nebula with the125! Thats excellent for a scope with a slow f ratio(f15). Overall I would not recommend this scope to anybody.
Pros: excellent mak-cass optics
Cons: poor quality, not user friendly, poor instructions

This review was written in the old system and had content requirements that are different than reviews written today.