Sky Watcher Sky-Watcher Virtuoso GTI 150P Collapsible Tabletop GoTo Dobsonian Telescope

Update. Oct - Nov 2025: Pretty nice scope tbh. Able to see faint lines on Jupiter and the ring of saturn with a super faint shadow. Saw a handful of satellites zoom past. For me and my location (city) the star tracker auto motion doesn't work. But the wifi phone app movement and auto target tracker is enough to keep a target like Saturn zoomed with a 9-6mm and a 2x barlow on focus and tracking while you look through the eyepiece, after some fine tuning and adjustments of course.. I keep it under the plastic bag it comes with. Still use the table I got in my review. Sorry no jupy pics but I have some saturn. I used a svbony redline. Old review: A fantastic portable telescope. Lots of reviews out there and alot of people say its an all rounder that's hard to ignore for its price. Needs a tutorial for collimation if you're new to it all like I was, luckily I bought a Lazer from svbony and it was very each to collimate, ie focus mirrors Into allignment. Great for visual, capable of astrophotography. Two truss open design requires lighter equipment but people manage fine it seems. I took a picture of the full moon using svbony "bronze line" set. The 4mm 10mm and 23mm, just by holding my s20+ up to the eyepiece. I dont remember which eyepiece i used. One basic picture but the second I pinch zoomed in gallery and it's really good quality. I'm impressed with the scope and eyepieces. I have a three legged 15 inch wide table i got from homegoods, for a base. Nice and stable, haven't used with goto yet though. Should be stable but I'll have to buy a power pack as 8 AA batteries isn't possible with a 12v requirement. I'm not interested in paying 2x to 4x the price of a scope for a mount even if it has fancy features or is technically superior. So as such Ill carry it on the small table and walk out the door and it's stable when I set it down, even when the scope is fully extended. Goto or freedom find. Manual or automatic. Nice features. First quirk is needing to build a light shroud, haven't done it yet but there are some videos out there. And the second is the focuser. Its helical and has alot of complaints. Another D I Y is teflon tape or plumbers tape to fix the poor fit of the focuser and its housing for optimal use but ultimately isn't necessary. Another thing that helps with stray light and what not a shield around the focuser is known to help. Over all 4.5 star. Will get dusty though. Have to think about that, and storage. Nice and portable.

This is not quite a total begginers telescope, but simple enough. It 's quite capable of planetary and deep space observation. The go-to works fine if you follow the alignment procedure, which is not complicated at all. The only thing I disliked were the eyepieces that came with it. They are acceptable, but do not do justice to the possibilities that this telescope offers. I bought 3 wide angled eyepieces (6mm, 9mm and 15mm) to complement the 10mm and 25mm that came with the scope. I know there is not a big difference between 10 and 9 mm in terms of magnification but the quality of the new ones make a whole lot of difference. Great scope in general, very portable and great for us mere mortals who just want a glimpse of the universe. 9/10.

I'm totally new to telescoping, but have been staring at the sky with binoculars and spotting scopes for years. Moved to a remote location and see a TON of stuff in the sky now. Chose this for my telescope because it is an All-in-one unit, has the manual and computer option although I mostly use manual, and because of it's portability. I wanted something light enough that I could EASILY put out on the deck and then back tucked in a closet and at 25# (or so) this is perfect. With some eyepiece upgrades, I got Saturn and the rings, pretty good for this time of year and the moon is ..intense. :) The focuser is a bit disappointing, but there are some online tips and I'm looking into modifying it. I've also fashioned a shroud that works nicely to cut out what very little light intrusion I may have from the house. The GoTo function works in a basic way for the times I've used it - I didn't imagine it would be spot on perfect for a mobile unit, but it works to get me in the area I want. So the bottom line is it is perfect for me and probably anyone else just getting into the night sky. A stool, here on Amazon fits the bill for a stand - Vasagle ULET283T41 - very sturdy and perfect size. Update 10mos: I am going to sell this. The more I got into astronomy and the higher magnification eye pieces, the less I liked the focuser. There is no way to upgrade or adapt it, so for the focuser alone, I'm no longer using this.

I was quite happy with the optics of this, e.g., easily separating the two stars of Mizar (from each other, not just from Alcor) with the high-magnification eyepiece, and getting nice sharp images of the moon with either eyepiece. The telescope creates its own Wi-Fi network, and you pair your phone with it to control the telescope. This is the approach I like, since I prefer to seek a dark sky and often don't have Wi-Fi there. But, the down side is that, once my phone pairs with the telescope Wi-Fi, it stops getting data from the cell phone network, and I'm off-line for everything but SMS and calls. So, next time I plan to take an old phone and pre-load the app there and use it (no 5G, or even 4G or SIM required, of course, since I only need it for Wi-Fi).

At the end of the day this telescope did not do what I expected it would do based on the manufacturer's claims on the Amazon page and elsewhere. Specifically, the GoTo feature is absolutely useless, because the error in the pointing is several degrees, and while several degrees might not seem like a lot, it is a very large error when evaluated relative to the field of view that find yourself using with this telescope. With a 6" telescope with a 750mm focal length, the magnification available, per standard rule of thumb, is 300x. I only tried 150x, and with this milder magnification factor combined with an eyepiece that has a typical 50-degree "apparent" field of view, the actual field of view is 1/3 degree, or 20 minutes of arc. The precision and accuracy needed, in order for the GoTo function to work, is about half as great as this number, which was obtained using a conservative magnification factor. The bottom line is that in order for the GoTo function to work, the error in the pointing needs to be no greater than 10 minutes of arc, or 1/6 of a degree. The actual error is easily more than 10x greater than this. I tried all of the different alignment methods, and was extremely careful in the manual corrections. In spite of my best and repeated efforts, the pointing error, when using GoTo after the alignment, was never less than 2 degrees, and that's giving it the benefit of the doubt. In reality I doubt if it was ever much less than 5 degrees. The manual alignment was never a factor. The same application is used with SkyWatcher telescopes with equatorial mounts. These mounts use a different type of motor, called a stepper motor, which allows the software that is in control to be really and truly in control. The several different kinds of manual alignment are supported by the application for when it is used with their equatorial mounts. The instructions make no mention of the fact that you are wasting your time if you do anything more than single-star alignment with this telescope. I can't say with certainty why the error in the pointing is as bad as it is, however I have a hunch. It is related to the use of clutches on both the altitude articulation of the mount and the azimuth articulation of the mount. The use of the clutches is not compatible with the use of stepper motors. It is all but certain that in this telescope, an ordinary (and cheap) DC motor is used together with a sensor by which the application on the smartphone is able to keep track of the number of degrees of movement. It is manifest that the clutch facilitates slippage between the motor and the part that the motor is attempting to drive (in the case of the azimuth articulation this would be the base of the mount, assuming that the motor is mounted in the lower half of the upright section). The decision to use an ordinary DC motor meant that it would be necessary to use a motion sensor, and also meant that it would be possible to use a manual clutch, thus making it possible for users to point the telescope manually, and to do so without ruining the alignment. Unfortunately, it does not work, and the only discernible reason is that the precision in the motion sensor is nowhere near as fine as it would need to be in order for this to work. In order for this to work, they could have used secondary gearing, on each of the two articulations, on the driven side, such that the motion of the moving part of the motion sensor would be perhaps 50x greater than the motion of the driven side. This would have permitted detection of motion at a much finer scale. If this had been done, the GoTo function would most likely work. But it does not work, because there is a reasonable limit on how great the pointing error can be, and the actual pointing error is significantly more than 10x greater that this reasonable limit. The tracking function, on the other hand, works well for certain kinds of celestial objects. Moreoever, the application does have the ability to move the telescope in fine increments when you tap on the control pad buttons that resemble a joystick. In fact, the use of these buttons in the application is probably the single greatest feature of the telescope. I encountered no problems with that, once I realized that it is necessary to set the speed appropriately, and once I figured out how to configure my iPhone settings so that the WiFi connection to the hot spot in the mount would not drop. The tracking function also works very well so long as the celestial object you are viewing is suitable to one of the kinds of tracking that the software in the application is programmed to do. Lunar tracking worked very well so far as I could tell. Sidereal tracking is useful for celestial objects beyond the solar system, and it also works reasonably well for the distant planets starting with Jupiter. It does not work at all well for Venus (and would not have worked for Mercury, which I did not try). For Venus, the motion of the planet itself would need to be taken into account, and this is not done. I did not try Mars, but the same would be true for Mars. Whether the Virtuoso 150P is or isn't a good telescope to buy depends on your purposes. If you absolute need the GoTo functionality and need for it to be precise, this is not a good telescope for you to buy. If you don't need that functionality, and if you don't mind that it won't track Venus or Mars, then it might be a good telescope, depending on whether the other features that work are important to you. The choice of telescope is very personal. There are more than a few bad telescopes, but they are mostly cheap telescopes with inferior refractive optics, and this telescope is certainly not anything like that. If the features that it has and that work are suitable to your needs, this is a great telescope and a decent value. It all depends on your needs.

Found it to be clear, highly portable, well functioning for the price point, and despite the much maligned plastic screw in focusing, very good all around. I think if you can’t fit an 8” DOB, this is the way to go. Needs a solid base, but I built one of my own but you can find plenty of easy and available walk around a for that from ikea or your garage. Very happy.

Estudié por más de 4 meses para elegir el telescopio de iniciación más adecuado para lo que quería (visual + astrofotografia EAA, tanto planetaria como de espacio profundo y que fuese transportable en vehículo) y mi elección fue el Sky-Watcher Virtuoso GTI 150P, lo cual tras tres sesiones estoy convencido que fue la decisión más acertada. Es importante complementarlo con lentes de buena calidad para sacarle el máximo provecho a su poderosa óptica, ya que los lentes incluidos son muy básicos. Hacerle cerramiento a la extensión es vital para evitar la entrada de luz parásita, en YouTube hay videos sobre esto. Plenamente recomendado. He logrado excelentes imágenes de Júpiter con sus bandas y sus 4 lunas galileanas, también de Saturno, sus anillos y su luna Titán, pude ver por primera vez a los lejanos Urano y Neptuno, la Nebulosa de Orión y la Galaxia de Andrómeda, las Pleyades se muestran impresionante, la Luna por supuesto se ve increíble, aún más con lente Barlow x2 y ocular 7 mm. Estoy ansioso por utilizarlo lejos de ciudad en cielos con baja contaminación lumínica para sacarle el máximo provecho.

Overall it’s awesome. Great image and very portable. Problem is tracking at high magnification is rough. There’s a ton of backlash (can be tightened internally). I can only stay on target for 8-10 minutes. There’s also a ton of features in the software that are disabled for no reason. Some would be incredibly beneficial like tracking speed. If they turned all the features on it would be excellent all around.

Para ser primer telescopio me resulta muy satisfactorio, ahora solo falta seguir aprendiendo y conseguir mas oculares, adjunto lo que he podido tomar de Júpiter y la luna, visto directamente con el ojo se ve mejor, en video y fotografía pierde calidad

ممتاز مرتفع يبين لك كل جرم سماوي عالية الجوده القمر و الكواكب (بذات المشتري وزحل والزهره ) وحتى باقي الكواكب. السدم والنجوم الامعه. ودقيق في نظام الغوتو انصح فيه ويستاهل السعر

Telescopio increíble. El único detalle es su buscador que, pese a no ser bueno, cumple con su propósito.

Imposible encontrar algo con la misma apertura y con GoTo por este precio, es verdad que el sistema de GoTo que trae no es muy bueno (ni si quiera lo eh logrado poner en marcha). De cualquier manera se puede usar de manera manual, lo cual es una gran ventaja teniendo en cuenta que viene con mira y todo. Si lo van a usar en ciudad recomiendo un buen filtro y también como accesorio recomiendo un buen ocular. Ultima cosa, el sistema de focus es en mi opinión es poco practico :(

Debo aclarar que es mi primer telescopio y no he tenido muchas oportunidades de usarlo, el cielo ha estado nublado últimamente. Sin embargo hubo un día en que el cielo estaba despejado, en el que aproveché y logré ver Saturno! La verdad fue una experiencia fantástica. Cabe aclarar también que no he probado el sistema go to, solo lo he utilizado de forma manual.