Zhumell Z114 Portable Altazimuth Reflector Telescope

Seems like a good quality telescope. I purchased this for my niece after a tripod mounted scope from a different company proved to be too hard for her to handle.The build quality was excellent and it was fairly well collimated out of the box, but the three locking screws for the primary mirror were barely screwed in and could have easily fallen out I think.I also purchased her an 8-24mm Celestron Zoom and a Celestron X-Cel LX 3x Barlow to use instead of the included eyepieces.Aligning the red dot finder was easy and she loved how the dot hovers in place no matter the angle you look through it. The finder was much higher quality than the other similar priced scope that we replaced.After balancing the scope with the upgraded eyepieces we found some trees over a hundred yards away to use to align the finder we literally were able to count seeds on a seed pod and observe insects crawling on the branches.Later that night we got awesome views of the moon, zooming in about 170x with the upgraded eyepieces. The scope was very easy for her to handle (she is 8) while set up on a patio table. She absolutely loved it and I was frankly a little jealous.I would strongly recommend the eyepieces I purchased as well, but you would get roughly the same range of magnification with the included eyepieces and a Barlow or two. I just wanted her to have the flexibility and ease of use that comes with a zoom.People shouldn’t overly obsess about maximum zooms. The difference between the 24mm and 8mm is only about a 3x increase.Going between 8mm and 4mm is only a 2x increase, so there is clearly diminishing returns the smaller you make the focal length in the eyepiece, and you often do so at a substantial increase in difficulty to use the eyepiece.Wide fields of view and plenty of eye relief are much more important than focal length when shopping for eyepieces.

This is a great telescope for my kids. I got this scope to teach my 5-year-old about astronomy and this scope has exceeded my expectations. At first glance, it is a small aperture, but includes a very nice red dot finder scope and an alt-azimuth "Dobsonian" style mount. This is great for my kids as we will mostly be looking at bright objects in the sky and won't need the aperture for distant objects or the full field correction for doing astro-photography.As for the quality, the mount and telescope are well constructed and the primary mirror was perfectly collimated upon arrival and required no adjustment to get up and going. One of the screws for the elevation stage had fallen out during shipment, but it was very easy to put it back and holds well. The kit includes two eyepieces, one for wide-field viewing (17mm) and a short focal length (10mm) for distance viewing. The wide-field looks to be of great quality and I plan to use that as the main power-house... the short eyepieces in kits like these will work for distance viewing, but they have a very narrow field, and are uncomfortable to use in my opinion, that said, the optical quality of the one included in this kit was pretty impressive, I was able to clearly see the rings of Saturn and it's brightest moon, Titan.It also has a modular lens cap that is able to stop down your entrance aperture for viewing very bright objects like the moon and Venus. i find this feature very nice, as the full aperture tended to be a little too bright for the moon in my opinion.Overall I'm very happy with this purchase and would happily recommend this scope for anyone looking to get into astronomy or as an educational gift for a child.If you're a discerning amateur astronomer, stay tuned, as I am planning to get this mounted on my tracker and use it for some photography with my DSLR in a few weeks, I'll post some pictures when I get them.

The media could not be loaded. The first thing right out of the box I noticed that the focuser is not only plastic but very loose. I did try to adjust the screws and I couldn't pin them down any further without damaging the actual telescope. I have to be honest the only reason I bought this telescope is because Orion messed up my order and didn't send me the telescope I wanted. This one was recommended to me and so far everything else on it works well. The laser finder works better than I thought it would and the eye pieces aren't half bad. I like the base and the telescope feels very portable. But the fact that the finder is so loose concerns me. I have other telescopes that this does not happen. If the company will reach out to me and possibly send me another finder I can review and change this right up later. Right now I'm looking to a local telescope shop to see if I can order one that's maybe less delicate.

Pretty nice for the cost. Right out of the box I was able to see the rings of Saturn and some nebulae. I have been using it for about a month and have not had to adjust the lens. I had zero expectations for the lazer and it actually functions very well and makes finding things very easy. The packaging seemed very secure. Perfect for an entry level affordable unit, i look forward to buying one of their premium models.