Customer Reviews

Discovery Exclusive Ultimate Star Planetarium

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

I bought this for my 8 year old. Overall, I felt the quality was pretty good. Everything worked as advertised. On the positive side, the interactive screen is great. My daughter can look up facts about the constellations including origin myths, star types, distances, as well as a large glossary of defined terms. She can also project the current night sky on the ceiling for our location and time, as well as for other locations throughout the world. The controls are intuitive and easy to learn. She enjoys the sound effects.
On the negative side, all the stars look about the same size and brightness on the projection, not variable as the advertisement would have you believe. Thus, those who are familiar with the night sky may have a tough time differentiating constellations when mixed in with bright backround stars. Also, the field of view does not have any indication of direction(N,S,E,w) to help in locating stars outside. The planet images were not very sharp. Finally, the image of the constellation on the screen does not always match the star patterns projected, as very dim stars are not reproduced on the projection.
Overall, I think this is a good product, but a bit pricey. Based on my research before purchasing, I don't think a better home planetarium is available in this general price range. However, for learning the constellations, I think a computer based program like Stellarium is better. To my daughter, this scored a 100% on the "gee whiz" factor. Of note- my 6 and 4 year olds lost interest pretty quickly as the descriptions are tailored toward a more mature child(I'd say 8-14 year old)

We bought this for our 3 year old daughter to go to sleep with, knowing she will get a ton of educational use out of it when she becomes older. She loves it. She has already started to learn the names of the planets. Every night before we go to bed she ask me to swith the planet to saturn. Then right before I go out she always ask me to change it back to the moon. The only thing I have found so far that I am disappointed with is that when you choose a sky (location and time) that the moon does not go to that type of moon, its always full. When its a half moon outside it would be nice to have the moon on the computer do the same thing. That way the sky is really the same, not just the stars. Overall though, we love it.

I got this for my eight year old son for Christmas. We thought it would be soooo cool, turning his bedroom into a starscape each night, picking out constellations, and learning some astronomy. Sadly, it just wasn't that cool.

When you take it out of the box, it has a great precision instrument look. You can simply plug it in and begin playing with it within 2 minutes-- minimal set up or reading of instructions, altho parental input is required. It has a neat timer on it that allows you to pick out a date so you can project what the stars look like at different times of year. You can even pick different countries and get their skyscape! Also, the device has a timer, so it will automatically turn off after kids fall asleep, which is nice.

The big downer is that every point of light is identical in size, shape and color. So, unlike in reality, the North Star is not brighter than the surrounding stars. This makes all the stars kind of run together in one big mess, making it extremely difficult to identify any constellations, which was the whole point of the toy! Add that to the fact that my son's bedroom doesn't happen to have a dome shaped ceiling (!), so there is distortion in the projection as well. After 2-3 nights we, simply gave up an trying to identify any constellations, and instead used it as a very expensive night light.

I bought this for my 10 year old nephew. Upon opening it and plugging it in, the lighbulbs shorted out in one of the projectors after being on for about five minutes. We took it back to the Discovery Channel store where we exchanged it (they were very apologetic about it, and had no problem exchanging it even though we bought it on amazon). We had the new one a little less than a week and it started malfunctioning. It wouldn't shut off at times, the motor seemed to make a grinding noise at others. The computer wouldn't let you navigate off the welcome screen, so getting to the command to light the projector wasn't even possible. Ultimately we decided to exchange it for a full refund and just get him something else. He was really bummed though, because while it did work it was pretty awesome. I can't beleive this toy is so expensive while the quality is so cheap. Save your money and look for a different one.

We bought this for our son and he enjoyed it until it failed a few months later. The unit would no longer power up correctly. We received a replacement unit and it failed the same way within a few weeks. I can't recommend anyone buy this product.

I bought this for my son two years ago. HE LOVED IT. It worked ONCE. It could have been the favorite thing he ever got if it would have stayed lit up as required. I took it back to DiscoveryStore and got a new one. The SECOND one had the same flaw. One side would lite and the other side wouldn't. Naturally, the globe on top was usually out. Very disappointing especially since 2 years ago these were $100.00.

I bought one of these from the discovery channel and saved it for last xmas. sadly the thing lasted one week after it was opened and had sat on the shelf for months before xmas came. so they offered a repair / swap that cost nearly as much as the new one. the repair didn't last any better and my kid loved the thing and was very disappointed. so when her birthday came someone gave her anotherr with alomst exactly the same result. this product is a casebook example of why amazon should allow some things to be banned as crap... i can't blame amazon though because neither of the ones that we got was from them. How do you feel when your kid crys because an expensive toy was crap?

I bought this product initially at a garage sale. My 8 yr old loved it so much he opted to sleep on the floor instead of his loft bed for over a week just so he could watch the stars. It is full of information and has only encouraged my son to delve deeper into space. He has learned so much that his 3rd grade teacher asked him to teach the class a little about space. We took the planetarium to school, and it fell off a stool. It still works, but it no longer rotates. He loves it so much, we are buying him another one. We highly recommend this toy!

The bulb that projects the planets died within just a few weeks and now the motor runs but the projector doesn't move. The stars appear all the same size and color which makes finding constellations almost impossible. It's basically a fancy night light.

I am very upset and disappointed in the planetarium's durability. I am a mom that tried to give a special gift to my son and instead I gave him a whole lot of disappointment. I purchased one and soon after, about 1 month, I had a problem. It would seem to work after you input the information on what program you want and it would turn to set itself but then shut off. Very upsetting! The company sent me a new one without issue. That service I rate high, but now the second one has had the same issue and is also not working. It is EXTREMELY sensitive and has a short life.

I wish it worked and lasted longer than a few months. It costs a lot of money and I felt that Discovery was a reputable company to purchase this from. I do not normally write reviews, good or bad, but this experience has caused me to alert other buyers of the planetarium's issues. Don't buy this product.