Customer Reviews

Meade ETX-TC Telsescopic

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I was looking for the best starter telescope that I can also use to photograph the moon, and after much due diligence, I decided on Meade ETX-80 as the best value overall, and am very happy with the purchase. However, the fundamental shortcomings of a cheap telescope (which is pretty much any telescope under $2000 or so) become immediately apparent, and you'll likely be plotting an upgrade to a model that's more powerful, solid, and flexible, e.g. Meade LX200GPS.

PROS:
- The package is fully featured, and out of the box, you can get set up and get going quickly. The assembled telescope (with the tripod) is light and portable, but built with high quality, and no problem after a month of heavy use.
- The planetarium software that comes with the package is useful and fun. If you buy the Meade LPI camera, you can hook it up to your PC/laptop and use it as a webcam and record videos during day or night.
- The two lenses that come with the package are high-quality and useful for most casual observations. The built-in Barlow is definitely useful for an instant-zoom as well.
- The package comes with its own tripod, cables, software, and controller. Don't forget to order batteries, but I'd recommend getting the AC adapter (order the ETX-70 compatible AC adapter from telescope.com).
- You can use ETX-80 for both day- and night-time viewing and photography. You can also order lunar and solar filters to observe/photograph the moon and the sun respectively.
- Photography with ETX-80 is easy, especially with the flip mirror that allows easy transition between viewing thru the lens and photographying with an attached camera. If you buy the right T-mount ("Meade 64ST" on Amazon) and T-ring for your camera, then attaching/detaching the camera to/from the telescope is very easy. You'll have a lot of fun photographing the moon at various exposure, cropping/zooming, color-correcting, and printing/displaying.
- Unusually excellent and complete documentation and FAQ on Meade website, which even includes video instructions on setting up the tripod. Meade deserves much kudos for a truly outstanding effort in the documentation front.

CONS:
- The focusing knob is poorly designed in terms of its location and feedback. Even a light touch on the knob shakes the telescope and does not allow fine control, making it easy to overshoot the focus range - one will be spending a LOT of time fiddling with the knob and cursing under the breath.
I ordered the ScopeTronix Flexi-Focus (from telescope.com) that's compatible for ETX-70, but had to return it after finding that it's NOT compatible with ETX-80. (If anyone found a better focusing accessory for ETX-80, please post here, provided that it's not the exorbitant electronic focusing mechanism.)
- Accessories for ETX-80 are limited at best, and many vendors themselves are confused as to which ETX-70 accessories are compatible with ETX-80 and which are not, so be sure to find out before you order accessories.
- Manual adjustment of the telescope is another source of major frustrations, especially if you want to adjust the telescope just slightly up/down/right/left, due to the still resistance of the turning mechanisms.
- At the same time, if you hook up a camera to the telescope (using Meade 64ST T-adapter and Canon T-ring that you can order from Amazon), weight of the camera overcomes the resistance of the telescope's vertical lock, thus tilting the telescope upward.
- Be sure to read the manuals before extending the legs of the tripod for the first time, or you may end up damaging the legs.
- The LED display on the controller is virtually invisible in daylight, so trying to test it for the first time in daylight is difficult - you'll have to wait until night time.

BTW, the Meade LPI digital camera offers superior imaging of the moon and planets over camera (in my case Canon Digital Rebel Xt). The housing of the LPI camera is rather poorly designed, so it'd rotate under the weight of USB cable and thereby rotating the image while you're trying to focus and capture the image on your PC/laptop.

Overall, it's a great starter package for a very attractive price that allows you to have fun and gain experience in observing/photographing, so that by the time you saved enough money to buy a REAL telescope, you'll be a much more knowledgeable and experienced amateur astronomer/astrophotographer.

Got this scope for Christmas. I was plenty excited about getting one after years of wanting a scope. I am a total amatuer in the field. The last scope I had was a long red Tasco many many years ago. I will review this just as I see it. I've never been near a fancy expensive scope, let alone use one. I put it together real quick. Put the batteries in (obviously any electronic field equipment is going to require batteries).

I got to set it out finally after a week of overcast skies. I turned it on and set up the time, date, daylight savings time, zip code and other initial settings. I used the included compass/level and set it to North. I went through the 'easy align' setup where it pointed to two stars. I don't really know the star names or locations but I would try to adjust it to the nearest brightest star I could see. The first and second alignments did not take. It was way off in the end. Eventually on the third try I realized that I should turn the daylight savings time 'off' and reset the clock. This fixed me right up. Once I did my third alignment, I found Saturn first time. I had purchase, as an accessory, the zhumell 1.25" EYEFIL set and started from the 25mm set and worked my way down the the 4mm. I found the higher the magnification I got the more the slop in the gears and mechanisms I noticed. When I would turn clockwise on the focus the scope's view would skew right. I learned I could over compensate slightly and refocus in the other direction to bring back the image. Its not so bad with the 9mm size lense but with the 4mm, you lose sight all together and you have to reacquire the target which shows other issues. When you skew the drive left it will send your view down slightly and then move as commanded. Again not so bad with the 9mm but borderline frustrating with the 4mm. The up and down skew does the same thing. Skew up and the view will move to the right some. It sounds like a nightmare of slop but in reality its liveable with some practice. It got cloudy on me so I packed it up for the night (that and I was freezing at 38 degrees)

Day two. Now that I was more familiar with it I dug in to the book and checked the faq sections on Meade.com. I calibrated the motors and checked alignments and mechanisms. I oiled the built in 2x barlow and it worked a lot smoother. I had to reset the azumith dial and I checked closely why I was seeing the slop. Its due 100% to construction. The forks are not sturdily built as they look and warp with the torque. There is a setting in the options for changing the backlash. I did not notice any improvement in the slop with this setting at max. I took it out again on a nice clear night. I had no problem getting it aligned in and I had a much easier time centering in and keeping targets in place even going to the higher powers with the barlow engaged. I used the Guided Tour option and I looked at Saturn, glimpsed Mars setting, The Great Orion Nebula, the Paliedes, and Cluster stars. I don't know how they did it but this little controller has a ton of information and it told me everything about what I was looking at. It has the ability to find whatever your looking for which is terrific for me.

It can also track satillites including the International Space Station. It says that satillites are best viewed in the morning or evenings because of the sun reflecting on the object. I haven't yet tracked any sats but I commanded it to find the ISS and it skewed into position and had a countdown timer. Apparently when the counddown is finished I look into the eyepiece for the target and push enter for it to follow. Is that cool or what? The government don't need to spend billions of dollars on fancy satillite tracking equipment. Just hire a friendly neighborhood nerd, pay him minimum wage and give him this telescope. Even Goerge W could use this!

With a communication cable you can use the included software to update its database for more recent finds or launches or firmware updates. I haven't loaded the software yet so I can't say if its good or not. I've heard there has been many issues with the software installing and right now I don't want the headache.

ALL TOGETHER, this is a fun telescope even with the high power slop. It is the best price/ bang for your buck at only $270. You cannot expect a super quiet, metal geared, cast fork, monstrosity for 270!. Instead expect a smart, compact, lightweight, 'plastic, tin, aluminum, made in korea' scope for the passing amatuer that will show you Saturn's rings, right out of the box and have enough money left over for fun accessories that can transfer over in a few years to something bigger and more expensive!

Really 3.5 stars in my book.

This scope seems to have, on the surface, a lot to recommend it- decent optics, computer guidance, etc., and to the novice amateur astronomer, it looks like a pretty good deal. Meade's pushing it as a slightly smaller version fo their very popular ETX90- but is it?

The ETX 90 is a long-focus Maksutov-Cassegrain- their attempt to clone the Questar at a fraction of the cost. The ETX doesn't really compare to the Questar (not surprising, as Questar spends more on the optics than the ETX costs!) but it's still pretty good for the money. An ETX90 can deliver sharp images up to perhaps 200x under ideal conditions.

The ETX80, though, is a very different animal. It's a short-focus 80mm refractor- sort of like half of a pair of binoculars- on a computer drive. And a short focus scope of this size is really only good up to about 40x magnification before secondary color starts blurring the image. Yes, you can see the rings of Saturn, but a decent pair of 7x50 binoculars will show you that as well.

The computer guide is less useful than it might seem; it takes time to set up and align and is really not needed on such a low powered telescope. You don't need a computer to find the moon, the larger planets or the brighter objects that this scope is capable of seeing. What you have, in essence, is a $150 telescope on a $150 computerized mount. In that price range, it's silly to spend half your budget on automation.

If you have $300 for a telescope, Amazon also sells Orion Dobsonian reflectors in various sizes that have far more light gathering ability and can see much dimmer objects. They're also steady as a rock. They may not have the same high-tech coolness factor, but they never need batteries, and for the typical beginner they're a much better choice.

First off, buyers must be aware that this is only an 80mm refractor and will not blow you away with its deep sky ability. That being said, this scope is a perfect starter scope for lunar and planetary exploration.

I was pleasantly surprised with the go-to unit found on the ETX-80. Easy alignment with an option to park the scope back at home position so that if you set up the telescope in the same place everytime, you don't have to align near as often.

Observing with the scope was very easy as my target was in the eyepiece field (26mm) all of the time. Saturn's rings were fully visible with the 9.7mm eyepiece as were Jupiter and her 4 largest moons. With clear viewing, cloud bands are even visible on Jupiter.

The only drawback I have found is that with the 9.7mm + barlow combination (82X magnification) it becomes very difficult to fine focus in on Jupiter. The focus knob is a little unwieldy and shakes the telescope when "dialing in". A more stable tripod and a different focuser would make this a 5 star item.

I purchased this scope when, after being out of the hobby of astronomy (more or less) for 20 years, I was bitten by the bug and got back in. I was looking for a telescope that was portable and had a goto ability. This little scope delivers. If you're looking for a scope that will deliver Hubble like views, you're not going to find it here (or in any amateur instrument). However, since June this scope has showed me eclipses on Jupiter by one if it's satellites (Io), one of the rare(of late) sunspot groups on the sun (using a solar filter I purchased elsewhere), Jupiter - Uranus - Neptune - Venus all in the same night. Beautiful star clusters, colorful double stars, a few galaxies (albeit, the galaxies were just faint smudges of light) and quite a few nebulae. If you're already familiar with using a binoculars for your astronomical viewing, think of this as one half of a giant binocular...the views will be similar, but with the added bonus of being able to increase the magnification by changing eyepieces.

If you do purchase this scope, I highly recommend that you also purchase the Meade 6.4mm eyepiece...this will offer greater magnification for viewing the moon and planets and for splitting very close double stars. For clusters and nebulae the included eyepieces are just fine (I use the 9.7 the most).

Is the scope perfect? No...the focus mechanism takes a little practice to get used to and requires too many turns to refocus when using the barlow. Also, the batteries don't last as long as Meade claims (figure about 5 - 10 hours of use). However, this scope is an excellent bargain...very good optics, highly portable, and a goto system that makes it easy to find your targets in light polluted skies or when time is short and you need to make the most of it. Highly recommended.

If you take the time to calibrate the motors, train the drives, and lay it level, point to true North, it does go to objects asked for.
And if you use the high precision mode, it references to a proximal known point, then slews accurately to the asked-for object. A final caveat - use lower power for searches, then up the power. Optics are crisp for this price point.

I was pretty excited to get this scope for the kids (and myself) for Christmas. 1st problem, Christmas day, it was unwrapped and we were ready to go, until I found out we needed 6 AA batteries. OK, my fault. The next night, got batteries, also researched the setup, read the manual, and watched the supplied DVD. The DVD was well done and very informative. OK, 2nd problem, on this cd, along with the DVD setup, there is a program to install called Astrostar suite. It didn't install. Bad CD as far as I can tell. Missing files it says. OK so we go to set it up. 3rd problem. They sent the wrong screws for the tray. OK, I'll find some in the garage later. It gets setup the rest of the way. Now to align it. 4th problem, after the first time of it aligning itself, you could hear very loud grinding noises that eventually got quieter but never went away. It did find the planets and stars I asked for quite well after many alignments. And I was satisfied that handheld worked well and impressed at the power of it. This morning I decided to experiment with it at a different location. As I was setting it up, 5th and last problem, the knob for the barlow lens fell off. I'm thinking no big deal. I figure that all I have to do is put it back on and tighten down the allen set screw. OK, the shaft decides to fall inside the scope and the lens to fall inside also. I had enough and called the dealer, and we agreed to replace it with something else (Celestron, but haven't made the final decision yet). The scope is poorly and cheaply made. Mostly plastic, tin and aluminum. I think it said it was made in Korea. In summery, the Astrostar computer is great. Too bad it's married with a piece of junk.