Skywatcher explorer 130 review

I thought that now would be a good time to write a review on the skywatcher explorer which I got for my birthday, it cost me £155 and I bought it from first light optics ( http://www.firstlightoptics.com/reflectors/skywatcher-explorer-130.html ) . Firstly I thought that I would say that I decided to buy the non motor driven one because I dont feel like I require a motor at this point in time and I can always buy the motor seperatly and attach it afterwords if I wanted to. When I decided I wanted to buy a small telescope to begin with I couldn't decide between the skywatcher explorer 130 or the celestron power seeker 127 eq, in lots of aspects they were both the same for instance primary mirror size e.t.c but I decided to get the skywatcher because of the fact that a lot of the celestron is plastic and most of the skywatcher is metal so I decided that it would probably be the more sturdy of the two.

Firstly, I found it relatively easy to set up out the box and it only took about 30 minutes to build it.The eyepieces that came with it aren't to bad considering that they come free with the telescope but after a while it is worth upgrading your eyepieces as you will get much improved views by upgrading them, both the 10mm and 25mm are ok but the 2x Barlow isn't very good at all in my opinion and I would probably upgrade that as soon as possible because if anything it justs makes the view worse. The equatorial mount that it comes in is good for the money and I found that when I was hand tracking the accuracy was very good. The telescope uses a dovetail attachment to attach to the telescope which makes it easy to transport as they can be easily took apart. The finder that comes with it is a red dot finder this is ok if you mainly do planet observing but if you are planning on observing dim stars e.t.c then it is worth upgrading the finder to one which has a low magnification. The telescope comes with an accessory tray which is very useful but you should be aware that to fold up the legs of the telescope you have to remove the accessory tray. The focuser on the telescope is good as it doesn't suffer very much from slipping when you let go of it.Overall I have the found the optics of the telescope very crisp across almost all of the field of view and I found that they provided good views of both planets and stars, also the mirrors came well aligned which meaning that I didn't have the hassle of collimating them. I am yet to use it to look at deep sky objects. Overall the telescope is very good value for money and great for beginners, if you have any questions regarding this telescope I will be happy to answer them either leave a comment below or email me at alex.wetton10@yahoo.co.uk