Gskyer Telescope, 70mm Aperture 400mm AZ Mount Astronomical Refracting Telescope for Kids Beginners – Travel Telescope with Carry Bag, Phone Adapter and Wireless Remote

I bought this knowing nothing about telescopes and not knowing what i could expect to see through this thing.

Now i know more, i think this is a decent value, but it comes with a lot of cons.

In telescopes, the aperture size matters much more than magnification. The bigger the aperture, the better the image will be. This is a 70mm aperture (2.75 inches), which is about as small as you can get. It’s typical for an ‘entry-level’ telescope, and a decent value for the money if you want to get into stargazing without dropping 500 bucks or more on a bigger scope.

However, if i could do it over again, i would’ve spent more and gone with a better one.

First, as with all beginner telescopes, it is actually much harder to use than a more intermediate level one. This is something well-known in the amateur astronomy group i’ve joined, and they never, ever recommend buying a beginner telescope, especially for kids.

Because most kids like looking at stuff more than looking for it. And with this telescope, far more time is spent hunting for objects than actually looking at them.

My kid doesn’t have the patience or attention span for that, but i rather enjoy the challenge, so i do it. Which brings me to the next problem.

This is made for kids. As such, the stand is very short. Which means that all the time you spend hunting for things, you’ll having to be hunched over, crouched down, or kneeling on the ground.

And if you live in a place with a lot of light pollution, you won’t be able to see much more than stars, the moon, or the brightest planets. Even mars is difficult to see through this telescope, and you can’t make out any detail whatsoever on the surface.

You can make out some faint detail on jupiter, especially if you go away from light pollution on a clear, moonless night. And you can just make out saturn’s rings.

Venus, on the other hand, is very easy to see. Especially now, near the end of april 2020, it is the brightest it’ll be all year, so we’ve been looking at it every night. It’s too bright, even at its dimmest, to make out any detail, but you can see what phase it’s in.

Galaxies, most nebulas, and many star clusters are beyond the ability of this telescope, but that being said, i was able to see a planetary nebula called the ghost of jupiter last night.

For perspective, i’ve had a few weeks of use and practice, and feel comfortable with the telescope, and have a number of apps, charts, and star maps to help me find things, and it still took over an hour for me to finally find it, put it close enough to the center of my field of view to use with max magnification, and put it in focus.

And even then, it looked like a hazy, bluish star. We couldn’t make out any detail or the distinctive eye-shape that can be seen with even slightly larger scopes.

Still, it was cool and the kid loved it. I consider it worth the effort, but my back is killing me today.

Don’t get me wrong, for an entry-level telescope, this is good. It’ll serve our needs while we save up for an upgrade. But, like all entry-level telescopes, this is harder to use and not powerful enough to see much.

All the time required to hunt for things, for what many may consider a disappointing result, could potentially end up killing a kid’s enthusiasm.

If you absolutely must get an entry-level telescope, this is a good choice. But if at all possible, save up and get a larger aperture.

Now at first i thought it was broken or i didn’t assemble it properly as i kept looking out and it was just pitch black. But then i removed the barlow lens and just used the regular 10mm one and found something like a star or moon and adjusted the telescope to focus on it.
I then removed and fixed the barlow lens in front of the other lens and bam! There was the moon, you can even spot a detail or two. I’m yet to explore this with the phone but so far, i’m sold!

Always wanted to tell the skype i could never afford one until i found this wonderful deal. It is wonderful quality the value is amazing. One of the best investments i’ve ever made absolutely love it.

Easy to use, sharp focus and fun. Comes with a very nice storage bag and seems to be well made! My son got it for his 8th birthday and loves using it.

Not a bad way to begin star gazing but has a very small range.

Product was straightforward to assemble. The carry bag made the equipment easily portable.

Super fun telescope, both me and my kids enjoy using it when we have clear skies

Easy to set up and portable.

Edit: the seller reached out to me in order to help and make things right. As stated before our telescope did not work as it should have. They reached out to try to help us work through the problems we were having with it. When troubleshooting no longer seemed to be an option they offered to refund. Grateful that they cared enough to make things right.

Multiple adults tried using (many of them having experience with different telescopes) but nobody were able to see anything. This was bought for my child to enjoy the stars. Disappointed. Even tried using up in the mountains with little to no light pollution.

Great product

This is an easy to assemble, decent grade of telescope. My family has been enjoying it. It is not heavy duty, so we are very careful with it. Fun to explore the night sky and easy tripod action makes it easy to use on a table or on the ground. My biggest annoyance is the clip to use your camera on the eyepiece is not very user friendly. It it awkward to attach and difficult to get positioned correctly. All in all, happy with the purchase.

Im happy with the scope. This pic of jupiter and 3 of its moons is a 10mm lens with my galaxy s20+ taking a picture (64mp) zoomed 3x. I haven’t been able to figure out getting the 3x that comes with the scope to focus. Practice.

Its decent for kids

Good telescope

I bought this as a gift for my grandkids and the intent was to allow them to witness the ‘christmas star’, the conjunction of jupiter and saturn on december 21. The plan was to capture the event nightly from december 19 through december 22.

Receiving and unboxing the telescope was pretty straightforward. The instructions were somewhat trying, but given that there were only a few ‘moving parts’ it was easy enough to figure out. The only problem we encountered was that the adapter for allowing the telescope to connect to a smartphone was missing half of the adapter and we could not connect a phone to the telescope. No idea why the part was missing. We unboxed the telescope on our dining room table and when we discovered the part was missing we had no less than 5 adults searching for it, to no avail. We didn’t lose the part, we just never had it. That was disappointing when you consider that being able to attach a phone was one of the primary reasons for selecting gysker and we lost our opportunity for the grandkids to record their witness of the grand event.

Setting that bit aside, the telescope worked wonderfully. It was easy to set up, with all of the [available] parts fitting nicely into the supplied carrying case. We transported the telescope to our observation area and the telescope set up easily. The ‘spotter’ scope allowed us to get on target quickly and the aperture and zoom features allowed for a spectacular view, including many of the moons surrounding the planets. We even used the spotting scope and a smartphone app to align the telescope with other stars for equally breathtaking views and we spent about 2.5 hours searching out various objects in the night sky each time we went out. (from dark until bedtime).

The grandkids (10, 9 and 7) really took to the telescope, learning how to use the various parts and functions rather quickly, even to the point that they could select and observe a star on their own. The tripod was solid and held a stable image and everything, sans phone adapter, worked very well.

If i was rating just the telescope on cost to function-ability, i would rate the gysker telescope 10 stars. It is a very good telescope for the money and since we wanted the kids to get excited about the night sky, this was a great purchase. The only disappointment was because i specifically chose this telescope because we could attach a smartphone to record an event that only happens every 800 years and then was unable to do exactly that, well, it was a real letdown.

Even at that, i would tell anyone wanting to start amateur exploration of the sky that this is still a great telescope for the money.

I had a really hard time putting together and using it. Needs better instructions or at least a link to youtube telling you how to use it. I’d probably say it isn’t for beginners, but nice price.

A great starter kit! Finally got to use it for the lunar eclipse and super moon last night so decided to write the review now.

Firstly, there was a slight mishap during shipping or maybe it could have been a defect coming in, but can’t tell. There was a dent on one of the tripod legs. Not a biggie for me, but wanted to rate this fairly.

The kit came complete, took a few minutes to assemble, actually quite easy esp with the visual instructions. But maybe it would have been better to have some basic instructions on the actual usage and tips to experience your first view of the skies. There’s a lot of info on the internet, but it would have been best to have it specific to this scope. For a beginner, i believe that’s key rather than having to do research and figuring out themselves how to apply those information to this specific scope.

I still have to figure out how to use the barlow effectively. For now, i was only able to use the 10mm and 25mm. The quality and resolution were fantastic. Even with the 25mm, i could see the moon’s crater clearly on the clear day. I’m excited to try this out on a more zoomed view and try to find other objects in the sky.

Mobile phone holder was a bit hard to align but eventually figured it out especially if the smartphone used has multiple cameras. It also took a while to understand that the distance of the phone and the lens matters, so as to avoid reflections or blurred outcomes. This information could have been useful if included.

Material wise, the whole scope setup is quite flimsy and unstable. With its lightweight feature, this makes it difficult to keep the scope in place. A bit of a tap on setup will move the scope away from your view, there needs to be a bit of weight for stability which is compromised by the lightweight feature unfortunately. The knobs and lever for adjusting are also a bit too rough if you’re wanting to make small movements.

Lastly, i love that it’s so portable and easy to bring alone, very lightweight and folds up easy without having to disassemble anything much.

Overall, it’s a great beginner scope for the price. It does its job.

This really is a great telescope but with my iphone 13 it definitely does not help during the daytime hours when trying to take pictures of birds or whatever it may be. It is constantly readjusting focus and seems to never get that, i have only been out at night a few times with the camera and it works well but there is quite a lot of adjusting necessary to get a good picture. Beside the fact of trying to take photos with a mobile phone it is a great telescope and works as you would expect it. This is honestly a good investment if you are wanting to get into night time viewing or daytime without taking pictures.

This telescope is great for beginners. It’s hard zooming in so we can’t adjust to get a closer view but other than that it’s great.

This is a good telescope for beginners who are just starting out and introduced to using one for the first time. Great bundle for the price, being that there’s a bunch of extra accessories that come with this kit as well!