Sky-Watcher Star Discovery P150i 150mm (6”) F/5 Wi-Fi Go-To Parabolic Newtonian Reflector

The first one arrived with a fault which meant no Altitude control. The motor ran fine but the OTA wouldn’t move. I contacted the shop Picsio who asked me to return it to the supplier. Despite me being an absolute pest Picsio to their credit soon had me sorted out with a new replacement. Sorry about that but when you spend £400 you expect something that works and it was pure frustration on my part. Still all’s well that ends well.To the Telescope itself, I have to say I love the new wi fi interface. A simple download to my old HTC One X+ Android phone of the free Synscan App which then finds the wi fi module which has created its own little network which you log into, and you can do this anywhere and the scope sprang to life. The app works well on an older phone as it doesn’t seem to ask too much of the processor and as such provides a very neat control solution. Just one thing here though, i was setting things up in my back garden and I had to tell the HTC to forget my home network as every time I got an email the phone automatically dropped the Synscan network and switched to my home one. Set up is straight forward and simple and weather permitting you are soon off and running, the new North Level alignment tool makes it very easy. The Alt and Az Motors are very smooth and with the variable speed control (0-9) it makes scanning things like the moons surface very easy. I really do like the feature where you can move the telescope manually and it remembers where it was previously for resuming what you were doing. I have also downloaded Sky Safari 5 Plus which is a mobile planetarium which can also control the scope wirelessly but only because it was reduced from £16.99 to £5.99. The lesser Sky Safari 5 was reduced from £5.99 to a no cost app but it doesn’t have telescope control included. I haven’t used Plus yet but it certainly has plenty of configuration options so I expect it will be a very useful tool. I originally wanted the Discovery 150P with the Synscan handset which I know is very good as my brother has one, but I have found the Discovery P150i to be a very useable and excellent piece of kit too. So far, due to the poor weather conditions of late I have only had the opportunity to align the scope and then have a 30 minutes or so looking at the moon and I was very impressed with the clarity of the optic mirrors using a 25mm Plossl eyepiece. The 10mm and 25mm eyepieces that come with the scope are pretty decent too but I do like the Plossl’s.

Poor quality / damaged. Trying to return, Not easy!

Bought this for my partnerEasy to use and set up .