Gskyer Travel Scope 70mm Review: Waste of Money
The Good
- •PORTABLE
- •COMES WITH A BACKPACK
The Bad
- •LOW-QUALITY OPTICS
- •USELESS 3X BARLOW
- •USELESS 5X24 FINDER
- •UNSTABLE MOUNT
Gskyer Travel Scope is one of the worst telescope models in the market.
Summary Review
This telescope would be expensive with a 70$ price tag, and it is being sold for almost 100$.
Don’t fall for Amazon’s product algorithm and reviews from amateurs who are using a telescope for the first time. You should spend your hard-earned money on decent telescopes.
Zhumell Z100, Orion SkyScanner 100, and Meade Infinity 70 are some of the much better telescopes at this price range.
Optics
The optics are not for viewing astronomical objects. Which is funny because this model is marketed as a telescope that you can use for stargazing.
The 70mm aperture “acceptable” for a beginner telescope. Infinity 70, for example, has a 70mm aperture and is able to provide decent images. But it also has a much longer optical tube and a better primary lens.
Gskyer Travel Scope 70, however, has a low-quality primary lens with a short, 400mm optical tube. The short optical tube creates severe chromatic aberrations, and the low-quality lenses decrease the brightness by a lot.
The result is a terrible viewing experience. This telescope can only be used for viewing Earth in the daytime, but for that, most people would prefer a good pair of binoculars.
Mount
The mount is mostly plastic, and the tripod is not stable at all. This is all done to fit the telescope in a backpack. But sacrificing stability for portability is not a wise thing to do with telescopes. Especially a telescope at this size, which is already easily carried around.
Accessories
The eyepieces are decent Kellner’s. They have 10mm and 25mm apertures. Although the 10mm eyepiece provides a little too much power(40x), the 25mm eyepiece(16x) is usable.
The 45-degree diagonal is not usable in most cases. If the object you are trying to observe is a little high from the horizon, it becomes a lot harder to look through the eyepiece, and you have to bend over. The diagonal is only usable for terrestrial viewing.
The finder is completely useless. An f/5.7 refractor doesn’t need a finder, particularly a 5×24 plastic toy with cheap lenses.
A decent 3x Barlow is really hard to manufacture. The one that is provided with this telescope is simply a marketing scam. It can’t be used with any eyepiece since it lowers the image quality, and it becomes incredibly hard to focus the optics.
Drawbacks
The optics are not usable for astronomy under any circumstance. (Except for the Moon.)
The 3x Barlow is useless.
The 5×24 finder is useless.
The base is not stable at all.
Conclusion
This telescope is only usable for terrestrial viewing. But even for that, Infinity 70 would be a better choice. It doesn’t come with useless accessories, and it has a more stable mount.
In-Depth Review and Technical Specifications
This product is an example of how terribly the Amazon algorithm can work.
The reason Gskyer Travel Scope 70 has a high rating on Amazon is that people who have bought it are experiencing a telescope for the first time and don’t know anything about astronomy or telescopes.
The thing they don’t know about is that there are much better models for kids or beginners who would like to see what a telescope can do.
Celestron FirstScope, for example, has a stable mount, comes with “not useless” accessories, and the optical design actually provides good images for the price.
Meade Infinity 70 comes with decent accessories, has a relatively stable mount and the optical tube is long enough to provide a good image.
If you are looking for a telescope for your kid or for yourself, you should check out companies like Orion, Zhumell, Skywatcher, and Meade. These companies try to manufacture the best telescope for the price, and they don’t trick people into buying junk.
Optics
The optical design is so bad it is painful to write in this section. A short refractor is already a bad design choice. The light that comes is from the lens gets diffracted too much in a short refractor and creates red and green image defects as well as a halo around the whole image.
The 70mm aperture is not bad and is used in some decent refractors. It is equal to a 90mm reflector, which is around the usable ranges of apertures. You can catch glimpses of Rings of Saturn, some detail from Jupiter and Mars as a red dot. These are usually enough to mesmerize most beginners, but as I’ve said before, there are other models that can provide better images.
Mount
The optical design is so bad it is painful to write in this section. A short refractor is already a bad design choice. The light that comes is from the lens gets diffracted too much in a short refractor and creates red and green image defects as well as a halo around the whole image.
The 70mm aperture is not bad and is used in some decent refractors. It is equal to a 90mm reflector, which is around the usable ranges of apertures. You can catch glimpses of Rings of Saturn, some detail from Jupiter and Mars as a red dot. These are usually enough to mesmerize most beginners, but as I’ve said before, there are other models that can provide better images.
Accessories
The eyepieces are Kellner’s, which are provided with most beginner models. The 25mm(16x) eyepiece is probably the best part of the whole telescope. It is actually better than the 20mm eyepiece that is provided with most models.
10mm eyepiece is another story. It provides too much power for a telescope this size.
The 3x Barlow is useless. It is impossible to produce a 3x Barlow at this price. The on that comes with this telescope is plastic and is equipped with cheap lenses.
The 45-degree diagonal is usable for viewing Earth in the daytime. It is not usable for astronomy. It lowers the image quality, and it is impossible to observe the objects that are higher in the sky.
The 5×24 is more of a toy than a decent finder. It belongs to the garbage.
Drawbacks
The optical design is not good at all. The lenses are cheap, and the tube is plastic.
The 3x Barlow, the finder, and the 10mm eyepiece are all useless and a waste of money.
The base is not stable.
Conclusion
Gskyer Travel Scope 70 is not a good product in any way. If you purchase this product, know that your hard-earned money is being spent on useless accessories, a low-quality optical tube, and a shaky mount.
Here are three models from three different companies that are vastly better: Meade Infinity 70, Zhumell Z100, and Orion Skyscanner 100.