National GeographicCompact Telescope 114/500

Only ever used a small 70mm celestron before now and bought this national geographic 114/500 telescope for my niece's for Christmas... I tried it out and it's far better than my 70mm celestron.... Build is very plastic but don't let it put you off as the close up viewing of the moon was really good.... Really good beginners telescope 🔭🪐☄️🌠🌛👽

for the price it is ok one point is the it is verry unstable and stiff to move

A children's toy. That is all. if you want to get more serious stuff for astronomy, get an 150" aperture reflector telescope as minimum. it is frustrating to watch planets with small size and no signs of deep space views. This is my beginner opinion.

Mount too stiff in the horizontal. No bearing between scope base and stand. Just two disks of wood rubbing against each other.Finderscope cheap. Plastic eyepiece focusser loose and cheap. Optics not bad but overall it could have been made much betterwith better materials.

Purchased to view Neowise.Not as easy to use as described, couldn’t see any stars through it, it was able to distinguish light from dark though.1 star as it was sent back and refunded without issue.

As this is a present I cannot completely review it.

This has a spherical mirror (newtonian telescopes need a parabolic mirror to focus light at a single point), so the optics are not good and, even worse, features a 6mm Symmetric Ramsden eyepiece, which was state of the art in the late 18th century and a 20mm Huygens eyepiece which was an excellent piece of kit in the 1600s when Christian Huygens invented it. If it was not obvious, you'll need new eyepieces and since the optics are not great either why not buy the similarly priced but much superior (optics and eyepieces) Heritage 100P for example?

Not easy to set up. Numerous YouTube videos, hrs spent outside trying to use it and it’s terrible. Can’t see anything. Window of return has unfortunately passed, otherwise would be returning.