Celestron 80LCM Computerized Refractor Telescope 22051

Comment:

Overall it’s a great beginner telescope. My original intent was for planetary viewing but I was a little disappointed because it doesn’t quite provide the amount of detail I was expecting. But, it does pretty well with deep sky objects as you can see from my attached photos – The Orion nebula, Pleiades star cluster, and the Andromeda galaxy. Eventually I am going to upgrade to a scope with a little more aperture for more planetary detail but for now I’m satisfied with my purchase.

Comment:

The red dot finderscope that is included with this unit is junk. It will not line up with the telescope unless shimmed. No material is included to shim it you have to figure it out for yourself. Even after you shim it and get it to line up with the telescope the annoying red dot obstructs the star or whatever you are trying to locate. Get ready for some neck cramps when trying to use this finderscope. Celestron’s customer services answer is to send you another of the same crappy finderscopes.

Comment:

We bought the 114LCM as a Christmas present as our daughter has out grown her old one! This telescope is fantastic! Sky Align worked on the first try with a single star and was spot on with the other stars we looked at! Just make sure you follow the instructions on calibrating the StarPointer and try it a couple of times! This will make life much easier in the dark! Highly recommend the AC adapter as well. I would highly recommend this scope and we are looking forward to the adventures to come!

Comment:

Was easy to setup. I like the motorized control. I bought the Celestron 94308 accessory kit to go with it since this scope just comes with 9mm and 25mm lenses. Do not get the 94306 PowerSeeker accessory kit since it comes with 9 and 15mm lenses…the telescope already has a 9mm lens. I also bought the Astromania laser collimation tool…still need to get it set up with this. Hoping it makes a difference to see planets. The moon looked awesome!!! The finder scope does work contrary to the reviews. Just takes some dialing in. Tripod is solid. Overall product is well made for the money. I did a lot of research and settled on this for my 10 year old son. If I get to see Jupiter or Saturn with this, then it would be a 5. Happy with our purchase so far!

Comment:

It’s hard to say anything about the quality of the scope itself, as the mount is such a flimsy, lightweight, lousy construction, that it was nearly impossible to even *point* the scope at anything successfully. And the first time the tripod got bumped seriously, the entire scope popped right off the mount, hit the ground, and broke the spotter scope off entirely. The way the scope body mounts to the alt/azimuth mount is simply cheap trash, and won’t withstand anything more than a good sneeze.Before that happened, though, I can say the spotter scope is nearly useless — it’s field of view is so wide, it’s possible to have a target appear perfectly centered in the spotting scope even if the main scope body is being swung through several degrees of arc. Attempting to “align” the spotter scope is basically an exercise in frustration — like trying to sight in a rifle scope that has no crosshairs or dot.

Comment:

This thing is chintzy, and the magnification is a joke. You have to screw with the battery back and connection to make the power tilt & rotate function, and you can see more detail with more clarity through a cheap spotting scope. Forget seeing other planets; you can’t even make out craters in our moon with this piece of junk. $50 binoculars work better. If I’d had the chance to test drive this before buying it for my kids, I’d have put the money toward something worthwhile.

Comment:

 I bought this telescope thinking that this would be an easy telescope for my son to use, nope it was not. For starters it took me a long time to figure out the star scope finder is a piece of junk. No matter how I adjusted the star scope finder it was no where near the center of the object i was trying to view. Besides this, once you are able to locate stars or look at the moon it looks nice but not for amateurs.

Comment:

As with other reviews, a negative star rating is needed. I’m glad I didn’t throw out the box that this defecant came in, because it’s going right back to Amazon. it refuses to align and the magnification on a terrestrial object is sub par to a par of binoculars. Do not buy this product.

Comment:

Wow, for $300 bucks with the adapter and two eyepieces included 9x and 25x it’s amazing. I initially had the 127 manual and the cable screw broke, so I bought this instead for lesser weight even though I was skeptical on how long the electric motor will last but it’s low speed with next to no torque so it should never have a problem. Didn’t even need the scope finder first time use out the box and the motor movement is nice and smooth. Great scope and great quality.

Comment:

We were excited to buy this “easy to use” telescope. This thing does NOT send out the necessary wifi signal so you can connect it to the required network for it to be aligned. Fine. No easy set up using SkyAlign app. So … We figured it was not ideal, but that’s just our luck. You can still manually align it. Supposedly. This feature also DOES NOT WORK. We watched every video, followed all the instructions. Nothing but “Failed to Align” error messages over and over. After two weeks of nothing but frustration we even hired a professional to come over and set it up for us thinking maybe we were just doing it wrong. Nope. Even an expert could not get it to send the wifi network signal for the app to connect the scope. He tried to manually align it for us. Same errors. OVER AND OVER. Fine, it’s faulty. We got a lemon. I contacted Amazon — they walked me through all the “how to” we had spent weeks trying to no avail. I explained this several times… finally we were told to just notify the manufacturer.Three days. I’ve been calling for 3 DAYS. The least amount of time I was on hold before giving up and pressing 1 for a call back was 1 hour and 47 minutes. One day I just left my phone on speaker and waited … 4 hours later … still no one picked up.So, customer service and tech support is as non-existent as the wifi network and Sky Align capabilities.Looks like we are the proud owners of a $400 piece of crap. Yay. One disappointed kid. Two frustrated parents.I sure hope the return process is easy. It’s going back in the box and being returned.