SOLOMARK Telescope 70mm Aperture 400mm AZ Mount Astronomical Refractor Portable Telescope for Kids and Beginners with Backpack,10mm Eyepiece Phone Adapter to View Moon and Planet

After using the product for 3 nights, I am sharing my review. The telescope is good however the stands is not satisfactory. The stand cannot keep the telescope steady. With the swift of the air flowing the telescope starts shaking. The aluminium stands are not good to lift a load.

Bought this telescope for my son who is interested in space. It says that you can view planets with it. You can't view planets with it - it has nowhere near the power required to do so. You can view the moon, and that is about it.Works fine for birdwatching and the like.

Ordered this, received it, opened it up, and was stunned at how generic it was. This is either just a private/white label version of the 70mm Celestron Travel Scope you can find almost anywhere, for probably cheaper, than this one...or it's a shameless knock off. I'm not sure which. The eyepieces certainly are of lower quality.Note that for stargazing, even in the best case this scope or its superior brethren are better suited for terrestrial viewing (i.e., looking at stuff on the ground during the day). The cheap tripods aren't steady enough for much else. They are kinda-sorta OK for beginner stargazing, but the junky eyepieces packed with this one make it fail that purpose.Get the Celestron if you want effectively the same (possibly better) scope but with better eyepieces and probably cheaper price. If you want to stargaze, at this level you're much better off with a Dobsonian-style telescope, like the Meade LightBridge Mini series.

I am REALLY glad that I purchased this. I got it for my 9 y/o son, who is very enthusiastic about science, and I wanted to see if he might have an interest in telescopes. It could have gone either way, but in this case, we looked through it for an evening and haven't used it since. It will likely be used more for looking at interesting things when we go hiking. The reason I am glad, is that if the telescope had been too cheap, it may have not worked well enough to have a fun evening looking at the moon and some planets. If it had been higher quality and more expensive, I would have regretted purchasing it. If nothing else, it kind of looks nice set up in the living room and will likely end up being re-gifted to another parent to see if their kids might be interested enough to invest in a higher level scope. I don't remember how much I paid, but I think it was less then a family of 4 going out to the movies. So, I figure that even only one evening looking at the moon is of greater value in my opinion anyways.

Since there was no instruction manual, I’m not sure if I have the correct parts or if I’m missing something. I have parts that I have no idea what their purpose is. Since it’s a birthday gift I won’t return it because I don’t have time. Rather disappointing. I would be happy to change rating if provided a user manual.Update: a user manual was sent about a month and a half later. I’m bumping rating up from 2 to 3 stars as a courtesy. If I can finally successfully see something I will bump it up even higher. Hopefully I have all parts, haven’t done an inventory based on the manual yet as I just received it today.

After reading several reviews I thought this telescope would be perfect for my son and me to get into night sky exploring. The tripod at it's highest point is still too low, with lots of bending over to peer through the optics. Once we had Saturn in our field of view the mechanics to lock in the position fared very poorly and a light bump with the eye and the optics and we had to start our search over again. The camera attachment is barely functional as it requires you to rest the camera over the optics, which bumps the telescope and you're back to looking for your object in the sky. The optics also fared poorly as objects were not clear. Spend the extra money and try something else.