Best Telescope 2024 - Reviews, Guide, Top Picks

With telescopes, as with much in life, what’s good enough for one person just won’t be sufficient for another. Recognizing this, Meade produces a whole range of telescopes based on the same basic design. The differences between the various options are pretty significant, though.

Different Strokes

Aside from the wide variety of aperture sizes available, you’ll find that the focal ratios of the various options differ greatly. This means that the low-f/ models generally offer lower effective magnifications and show greater distortion at any given level of zoom. Though this telescope is of the refractive type, it includes a 90º prism so that objects appear the right way around, meaning that it’s much easier to navigate around the night sky or a landscape.

For each telescope, the prospective buyer has a range of viewing powers from which they can choose – from about 10x to over 100x. This is achieved by swapping out the included eyepieces, of which each model has either two or three tailored to their optics, giving a decent range of viewing options. A 2x Barlow lens further allows you to tweak the size of your image to frame an object perfectly, though it won’t really help you to push the limits at maximum zoom.

The alt-az mounts on each are also not the same, with the 50 mm version having only basic support on a rudimentary tripod, while its more expensive cousins have steadier bases that offer fine-tuning over elevation, bearing, or both. None of them are especially well-built, unfortunately; it’s difficult to adjust your telescope precisely, while a finger carelessly bumping into the tube will probably move your target out of view. You can use a smartphone to take photos through the eyepiece, which works fairly well if you buy a bracket to hold it in place. DSLR camera attachments are also supposedly available, but telescopes in this range aren’t really stable or precise enough to make this worthwhile.

Best for Beginners

All in all, these are all pretty decent starter telescopes for someone who doesn’t really know what to expect and therefore wants something that’s fairly capable but not too hard to use. These same people will also appreciate the simple how-to video and computer-based star and moon atlases that come with the telescope.

If you find yourself in this position, you could do worse than selecting whichever is the biggest-aperture telescope from this range that falls into your budget. Don’t, however, expect stellar (heh, heh) image quality; this is truly a hobbyist telescope, good for spotting birds, ships, planets, and lunar features, but you won’t be able to see nearly as much fine detail as with more expensive models. If you live in an area with large amounts of light pollution, your viewing will be limited to closer, brighter objects, especially if you choose one of the lower-aperture models.

A High-Quality Beginner Scope

This well-constructed refractor telescope comes with a selection of three eyepieces as well as a (plastic) 3x Barlow, giving you a nice selection of magnification options right out of the box.

Setup is also ridiculously easy, as is orientating it using the 6×30 non-inverting finder scope, so you can be up and running within 15 minutes. There are some very user-friendly apps around to help you get started.

While the lens assembly isn’t color-corrected and you will notice a visible halo around objects under some circumstances, the anti-reflection coating does help to produce a somewhat sharper image with better contrast.

The mount is worth mentioning: as long as it’s on a firm surface like a porch or deck, your view should remain steady. Unfortunately, keeping it locked in position or doing any kind of slow-motion adjustments relies on a friction clutch, which can be frustrating.

Not All Things to All People

In terms of refractive telescopes, this is a clear cut above the Meade Instruments Infinity range, but behind the apochromatic Sky-Watcher Evostar. It is, in other words, a good general-purpose telescope that will give you a nice view of lunar features, the rings of Saturn, and so on.

The non-inverted image also means that you can use it to watch passing ships from your porch or whatever takes your fancy. However, the highly portable 70 mm travel scope from the same manufacturer would be better for viewing wildlife unless you’re a professional nature photographer. Like the 70 mm, this telescope comes with a cellphone holder and wireless clicker, while T-mounts are also available for real cameras (which the 70 mm is not heavy enough to accommodate).

If your main interest is in photographing celestial scenes, however, you could do better. While refractor types have the advantage of looking like “real” telescopes on the outside, they quickly become very expensive at around the 100 mm level. You can easily find a reflector telescope with a much wider aperture at around this price point, for instance the Orion SpaceProbe 130ST.

Despite the fact that reflector telescopes are often preferred due to their many advantages, it’s also true that a well-made (and therefore lavishly priced) refractor beats a mediocre reflector any day. In particular, truly high-end, chromatically-adjusted refractors are known for the clarity and contrast with which they can display fine detail, making them (all other things being equal) an option that serious photographers would do well to consider.

You Get What You Pay For

The very first thing you should know is that this telescope, whether in the 80 mm, 100 mm, or 120 mm variant, is sold without a mount or tripod. You’ll effectively be paying more than the already hefty price tag. Since a decent motorized mount (and one that can only barely handle the 100 mm version’s weight, at that) can cost close to a thousand dollars, this is not a scope you’d buy unless you have a specific purpose in mind for it.

The reason for this intimidating price tag is, of course, the Sky-Watcher’s apochromatic lens system. This means that the optics are designed to correct for chromatic aberration, negating the major advantage reflector telescopes have over basic refractor telescopes (though not cheaply).

Fearsome Features

This telescope, being a refractive type, is relatively portable and is supplied with a metal transport case. This seems like an excellent idea at this price, but it’s certainly not a toy you would bring along on a weekend getaway like the Gskyer Travel Scope or even the Orion StarBlast.

The good news is that the clarity this telescope provides has to be seen to be believed. Even at high magnifications, images remain crisp and color-correct (which is also thanks to a good, though not top-of-class, focuser). Anyone who wants to take their astrophotography hobby to the next level and is willing to spend a hefty sum for the privilege will love this telescope.

Pint-Sized Performance

The most salient feature of this Orion product is that it’s compact – very compact for what it can do. Sporting a 1,250 mm focal distance, the whole body is only twenty inches long and, though it’s compatible with camera-type tripods, it is really intended simply to be plopped down on any flat, level surface that happens to be handy. It’s about as light as the Gskyer Travel Scope, although the latter, of course, includes a folding tripod.

This design choice is, in a sense, a refinement of the Dobsonian “light bucket” concept, of which the Orion SkyQuest XT8 is a good example. Although it helps to keep costs down while still allowing skygazing through a large aperture, it also assumes that the base is a lot more solid than the average folding picnic table.

Also like with most Dobsonians, there are no fine-grain, slow-motion controls on this telescope’s mount. With a six-foot-long Dobsonian, it’s fairly easy to move it a fraction of a degree by touching it on the end far from the pivot. A tabletop model doesn’t give you this option, making accurate aiming at anything above 120x magnification somewhat tricky.

Seeing Is Believing

Usually, when it comes to hobbyist telescopes, it’s not really worth worrying about the focal ratio (the focal length divided by the aperture diameter) when it comes to image quality – the quality of the optics matter far more. When these are already good, though, f/ numbers start to matter, with f/10 generally considered the cut-off point between wide-angle and narrow-angle telescopes.

Of all the scopes that managed to snag a place on our list, this model has one of the highest focal ratios. This allows low-distortion, high-magnification views even with relatively modest aperture size. Particularly if you invest in a mount with slow-motion controls and your eye is practiced enough to discern faint objects, you should be able to see the brighter star clusters and nebulae. You can even distinguish double stars.

On the other hand, this isn’t the best scope for photography, in part due to that same high f/ ratio. Just like with cars, clothes, and wine, which telescope you need depends entirely on what you need it for.

Although not nearly as versatile as tripod-mounted models, tabletop telescopes like the Orion StarMax 90mm and this product from the same manufacturer do have their adherents. In particular, these are usually easy to move from one place to another and set up once there, and astronomy is a hobby that’s much more fun when shared. Just know that you’ll need something very sturdy to place it on; a concrete picnic table will be ideal. You can also, if you prefer, buy a suitable tripod (capable of supporting 25 lbs or so) in case a convenient platform isn’t available.

Plenty of Aperture in a Tabletop Telescope

With a 150 mm objective reflector, the StarBlast 6 has almost three times the light-gathering power of the StarMax 90mm.

This scope can also be upgraded with an “Intelliscope” module, which isn’t designed to work with the StarMax and wouldn’t do much good on an easily-aligned 90 mm telescope anyway. Although not a go-to drive, it serves much the same purpose: simply select one of the celestial objects in its database, and it will show you how to move the telescope until, if all goes well, you have it in view.

Fun to Use, But Not Perfect

Unfortunately, though it is possible to hook up a phone or camera to this telescope, actually taking photographs is a bit iffy and depends on your setup. Many DSLRs simply will not be able to get into focus, which will be a dealbreaker for many.

A focal ratio of f/5 can also be a headache, depending on what you plan to use it for. It makes accurate collimation that much more crucial, and this scope will do better at displaying galaxies and star clusters than narrow-angle targets like the planets in our own solar system.

Like the Meade Instruments Infinity, the Celestron NexStar SEs are a series of telescopes similar enough to each other to talk about in the same review. Their major feature is that these come equipped with a go-to drive, supported by a capable star-finding computer.

Does 99% of the Work for You

To make use of the computerized aiming system, all you need to do is enter your latitude and longitude before manually aiming the telescope at two reference stars for it to get its bearings. As long as you can recognize the major constellations, this should present no problem, but some would say it almost makes stargazing too easy. Part of the fun of amateur astronomy, after all, is getting to wrestle with ephermerides and sky charts, eventually finding what you were looking for after losing your way a few times.

If, on the other hand, you’re more interested in the view than the technique, you’ll appreciate how easy this telescope makes setting up a “sky tour”, cycling between a number of celestial objects. This is particularly useful when entertaining a group of people, as each can see a number of things without having to wait for the scope to be re-orientated. It’s also no trouble to photograph your discoveries. Once you have the frame you want, it takes seconds to attach a camera using the (separately sold) T-ring and adapter, while the computer will keep tracking it.

Unfortunately, since the mount is alt-az rather than equatorial, exposures of more than a few seconds will not be possible, unless you’re willing to live with a somewhat blurry image and star trails in the background. This makes it possible to take snaps of most planets, but nebulae will be a no-go unless you crank the ISO up to very high levels. You may also buy an equatorial wedge from the manufacturer to compensate for this, though this pushes up the total cost significantly.

Good Telescope for Beginners, But Certainly Not a Cheap Toy

Considering that these telescopes have apertures ranging from 4″ to 8″ (approximately 100 mm to 200 mm), it’s not surprising that this model is on the expensive side. The automatic aiming and tracking system doesn’t help in this regard, and since – in our view at least – the extra light-gathering ability of the 6-inch or 8-inch model is definitely worth it, you may end up spending a significant fraction of a month’s salary on this monster.

This, we might add, is without the extra expense of things like a dew shield. It would also have been nice for the manufacturer to throw in a few accessories almost all users will eventually need, like moon and sodium filters or in fact more than one eyepiece. Once you’ve bought a Celestron NexStar SE, you’ll probably have to keep spending in order to get the most out of it.

In other words, while there’s a lot to like about these scopes, this is not the model to buy if you’re not sure that you’ll get plenty of use out of it.

Some amateur skygazers specifically refer to themselves as the “backyard” type. Spending an evening on your own lawn is certainly convenient – travel costs are minimal and there are snacks.

What, however, is someone living in a well-lit city to do? Even the best telescope’s performance is severely degraded by light pollution. This generally means that a road trip is called for if you want to see celestial bodies at their best, and it just happens that sharing a telescope at a campsite is way more fun than telling ghost stories.

Most of the telescopes on our list are portable to some extent. Some weigh 30 pounds or more, many require more than a little work to set up, and a few won’t work without batteries. Most don’t even have a traveling case or pouch, though for a few models this can be ordered separately.

Astronomy on the Run

Refractor telescopes, though they have their disadvantages, are the only real choice when it comes to any kind of highly mobile scope. Reflectors are inevitably thrown out of whack by jolts and vibration, and collimating them again can be a pain when you’re somewhere far from a toolbox and, indeed, Youtube tutorials.

This Gskyer telescope doesn’t have that problem, while the light weight and the fact that both the tripod and scope fit into a carrying bag make it much more convenient for use in remote locations. Of course, weighing only 6 pounds and coming in at a competitive price, this device isn’t built like a tank – handle it with at least rudimentary caution.

The main limitation of refractor telescopes is, of course, the size of the objective: larger lenses are more difficult to manufacture flawlessly and mount securely. This, combined with the requirement for ruggedness, limits the Gskyer to only 70 mm. This isn’t a terrible disadvantage, though – using the two supplied eyepieces and 3x Barlow lens, you should be able to spot most planets on a dark night and see fine details on the surface of the moon. In keeping with the camping theme, this telescope is also very suitable for viewing wildlife.

Happy Snaps

One of the more interesting features of this telescope is that it comes standard with a smartphone bracket as well as a hands-free Bluetooth remote. This model is far too light to accommodate a real camera, and the wireless shutter control is, unfortunately, a necessity: the mount really isn’t the best and any pressure is likely to throw off your shot when taking a picture.

To sum up: if you’re specifically looking for a telescope you can travel with, this is one of the better choices out there. If, on the other hand, you don’t plan on dragging your scope around in the wilderness, something like the Meade Instruments Infinity will probably satisfy you better.

We now come to our first Dobsonian telescope. This isn’t a description of its optics but rather of its mounting (although, like almost all Dobsonians, this Orion is technically a Newtonian reflector on the inside). Rather than using a tripod to resist unwanted movements from sources like wind and soil vibrations, the base sits directly on the ground. Since the eyepiece of a Newtonian telescope is near the top, this arrangement allows longer, wider telescopes to be mounted efficiently – and it is very stable.

Eight Inches of Aperture

The night sky holds plenty of wonders for anyone with a fairly low-powered scope, or indeed a pair of binoculars. To see closer objects in more detail, however, or detect deep-sky objects like nebulae and star clusters at all, you need plenty of light-gathering capability, which means a wide aperture.

Apart from dedicated observatories, the most practical way to hold these large objective elements and the tubes they need to work is a Dobsonian mount, while the high levels of magnification they enable require more stability than the average tripod can provide. The trade-off, of course, is that this isn’t a telescope you can sling into the trunk of your car for the weekend. If your house is in an area with high humidity, light pollution, or smog, you might well find that the maximum nominal zoom of 400x becomes a lot less in actual practice.

Not All Roses, Though

Unusual for a hobbyist telescope, this Orion can accept eyepieces of both 1.25″ and 2″ sizes. Despite what you would expect, this has little to no effect on image quality, although it does give you a wider selection when shopping for new attachments. Only one eyepiece is included in the box, giving you 48x magnification to start with.

In order to take advantage of this telescope’s power, some other extras you probably will want to order at the same time are a better finder and a laser collimater. That said, this telescope isn’t too difficult to calibrate considering its size, and since it probably won’t be moved around too much you shouldn’t have to calibrate often.

The base, unfortunately, is made of particleboard, which raises questions about its durability. Movement is reasonably smooth for large slews and springs help to keep the tube steady, but fine adjustments are rather difficult – use a light touch.

This telescope’s shortcomings aren’t catastrophic, though. Best of all, the altitude-azimuth mount is no more difficult to use than one on a cheap toy telescope. If you have the space and the cash, this can therefore be a good starter telescope with exceptional viewing potential.

By far the most expensive telescope on our list, this range actually goes up to a whopping 356 mm aperture, though the average weekend stargazer neither needs nor can afford that kind of capability. Nor is this a short, “fast” telescope: a focal ratio of f/10 means that atmospheric conditions will generally be the limiting factor when it comes to effective magnification, not the telescope itself.

Exceptional Mount and Best-In-Class Optics

With some manufacturers, it almost seems like they try to bring the total cost down by including a tripod that’s only barely adequate. This would be unacceptable at this price level, so it’s good to see that almost nothing short of an earthquake will disturb this telescope.

Although you can aim it manually, the computerized aiming system is exceptionally accurate and includes a GPS unit for easier and more accurate calibration. If there is one bad thing to say about the mount, it’s that it’s of the alt-az type, meaning that the view frame will seem to rotate as the earth moves even if an object is being tracked correctly. The wide objective gathers plenty of light, but photographers will probably want to buy an equatorial wedge to enable exposures of half a minute or more.

What makes this telescope truly special, however, is its “coma-free” optics. With all telescopes, sperical aberration causes objects near the edge of the view to be distorted. This usually doesn’t matter much when looking at point targets like planets, but can be an annoyance when photographing moonscapes or nebulae. Meade solved this problem by making the secondary mirror a paraboloid instead of flat, which results in everything you can see truly falling into the same focal plane. This partly explains why these scopes cost as much as they do – the only other way to get similar performance is to book time at a real observatory.

Too Much Telescope for Most

Sadly, although this telescope will make many budding astronomers drool onto their shirts, it’s overkill in a lot of ways. If you live in a city or an area with high humidity, you can probably get by just as well with the cheaper Celestron NexStar SE, which has a similar level of automation.

Taking the LX200-ACF on road trips is also not something to be undertaken lightly. At about a hundred pounds for the 8″ model and rising to over 150 for the 14″, it’s just not very portable, even if you’re not too worried about this very expensive piece of gear getting damaged or stolen. You’ll have to buy a transport case separately too, but collimation is, thankfully, easy to do.

Very nearly everything you can say about the Orion SpaceProbe 130ST applies to this Celestron product; it’s recommended that you read our review of the SpaceProbe now if you haven’t already.

Both come with Barlow attachments and have similar apertures, manual equatorial mounts, the ability to fit smartphones or DSLR cameras, and a comparable accessory suite. Yet the SpaceProbe costs nearly twice as much; why?

Focal Lengths and Ratios

The answer basically comes down to a 1,000 mm focal length on the Celestron as opposed to 650 mm on the SpaceProbe. This implies that the SpaceProbe has a smaller “f/ratio” – a telescope’s focal distance divided by its aperture size. In photography terms, it would be called the “speed” of a camera at any given setting.

In theory, at least, a smaller f/ratio implies greater distortion and lower magnification, but also brighter images. With refractive, lens-based telescopes, this is a critical variable. With reflectors like the Celestron and SpaceProbe, though, it really doesn’t matter as long as the telescope is well-designed.

You might notice some distortion around the edges of an image taken at f/5 or lower, but this isn’t the end of the world. At the same time, since a lot of the optical processing of a reflector telescope is done in the eyepiece, trading magnification for brightness is just is a matter of switching these out, or alternatively installing a Barlow.

Only Technically a “Beginner” Telescope

Again in theory, telescopes with a large f/ ratio should be easier to collimate since there’s more play in the lateral positioning of the secondary mirror. In practice, though, this depends more on a particular scope’s design, and this is where the Celestron falls down. People with some experience in calibrating Newtonian reflectors will probably figure it out before too long, but novices should steer clear. People who have trouble with fine mechanical tasks (due to arthiritis, for instance) would also be much better off with the SpaceProbe.

The 150-page instruction manual helps, but not as much as you’d think. Furthermore, the tripod and mount are a little flimsy and difficult to use – you can’t just yank your scope into position, and the counterweight is a little fiddly (though the slow-motion controls are quite easy to use). If you’re a seasoned stargazer and used to playing with reflectors, this could be the telescope for you. It would be a waste of money if you were looking for your first telescope, unless you’re willing to play a mechanical version of Jenga after every time you move it.

Dobsonian telescopes are lovely in terms of how wide an aperture they offer at a low price, their ease of aiming, and their general simplicity. Unfortunately, when it comes to moving and storing them they’re typically about as convenient as a small cow. These factors often make them inaccessible to people who would otherwise prefer Dobsonians over tripod-mounted telescopes.

Portable…Sort Of

While not a perfect solution, allowing the body to “telescope” out to its full length when in use and collapse down to a more manageable length afterward can save a lot of space in a car or closet. In this case, the tube is about 25 inches long (for the 12″ and 10″ models) in its storage position. This kind of mechanism leads to the tube having open sides when extended; while the paraboloid objective mirror shouldn’t pick up any noticeable amount of light that’s not getting in through the aperture, you can certainly expect more dust and dew to end up on it. You may want to sew together a kind of skirt for it from blackout material, which should take care of both problems at once.

People who plan to take this scope along to viewing meets or educational events should also take note that, due to the collapsible design, you will most certainly have to collimate it every time it’s set up in a new location. This isn’t brain surgery, particularly if you have a laser collimator, but it may be enough to make some beginners opt for a refractive telescope instead.

Pretty Good Value at the Price

Though more expensive than the Orion SkyQuest XT8, the extra cash is not necessarily wasted. The base (just over two feet across) of the Sky-Watcher, although also made from particleboard, seems to be a bit more solid and the bearings turn much more smoothly. In terms of optical performance for a given aperture size, there’s little to choose between them. Both also come in go-to drive versions, though people interested in this kind of scope will probably prefer to spend the money on extra accessories.

Though not the best scope (plenty of) money can buy, the SpaceProbe is a solid mid-range contender. One reason for this is its respectable 130 mm parabolic objective reflector. Assuming that viewing conditions are good, you should be able to get an excellent view of Jupiter’s four largest moons and the rings of Saturn.

Equatorial Mount

Another point in its favor is that it comes with an equatorial mounting.

Most beginner’s telescopes, like the Meade Instruments Infinity and Gskyer 600x90mm, are of the alt-az variety, which is perfectly fine for just looking around. Sometimes, however, when you’ve found something especially nice to observe or you’re waiting for the atmosphere to grant you a clear view, they make it difficult to keep your subject in view as it drifts across the sky. An equatorial mount, by contrast, allows you to slew your telescope along only one axis (that of the earth’s rotation) to keep studying it.

It should be mentioned that some people find it difficult to aim the base at geographic (as opposed to magnetic) North each time they want to go skygazing. In principle, though, this is no more difficult than getting the tripod horizontal using a spirit level, and practice quickly makes perfect.

This mounting option also lets you take much better photographs (when you have an Orion universal adaptor as well as whatever T-ring fits on your camera).

However, unless you’re willing to spend $100 or so extra on a drive unit, you’ll have to keep your target perfectly centered using the eyepiece and slow-motion knob for as long as the exposure lasts.

But You Can Find Cheaper

Included in the package are two eyepieces as well as a 2x Barlow magnifier. This is essentially just a set of lenses designed to fit over another eyepiece, increasing the viewing resolution at the expense of some distortion and lower brightness.

With a scope of smaller aperture, this trade-off doesn’t really help you achieve greater magnification, though 130 millimeters might be enough to discern a nebula on a clear night. More importantly, having a Barlow lens can help to expand an image which is just a little too small, without having to switch to a more powerful eyepiece. If you like, you can also order this telescope bundled with an accessory kit including extra eyepieces and a couple of filters.

In any case, the equatorial mount won’t matter to many amateur astronomers – you can just as easily find a particular star or planet with a cheaper alt-az in the 130 mm range. At the same time, the lack of an automatic tracking motor makes this a less-than-optimal choice for astrophotographers, who’d be better off paying a little extra for a telescope that will do a lot more for them. If having an equatorial mount really is important to you, you should also check out the very similar Celestron PowerSeeker 127EQ. This option costs much less, but comes with a few caveats of its own.