Do inexpensive telescopes really work well?

Question

My daughter is turning 5 and really wants one but I cant get a real expensive one,maybe one day if its a big hobby of hers but what about the cheap ones?

Answer 1

How cheap are we talking? Orion (http://www.telescope.com/ ) has some decent scopes for under $200, which is cheap for an astronomical telescope.

The typical under-$100 discount-store scope is junk. Your 5-year-old probably can't tell the difference, but assuming that you will be using it with her, you'll find it very frustrating.

At her age, she's probably much too young to use a telescope by herself, so the suggestion of binoculars is a good one (though she may not think so!). Some kind of low-power, wide-field scope like the Astroscan (http://scientificsonline.com/product.asp?pn=3002001&sid=google&cm_mmc=google-_-cpc-_-edmu-_-astroscan&bhcd2=1168101084 ) might be a good compromise.

Answer 2

The kind of telescope you are probably thinking about is the last thing I'd buy for a child. It actually takes a fairly knowlegable person to see a decent image in them as the optics are horrible and the mounts hard to use and unstable. To some it up, your money will buy you a very frustrated 5 year old if you buy a cheap telescope.

I recommend getting your daughter a pair of binoculars. She will have a much easier time using those and she'll probably be facinated by the fact that she can look at things on the ground with them too.

When you can afford it, a good telescope for a young child is the Orion StarBlast. Mom and Dad will get a kick out of it too!

Answer 3

short answer: No. Telescopes are like everything else, you get what you pay for...

That said what a five year old wants a telescope for isn't well served by an expensive one.

Consider a very inexpensive pair of binoculars which could be re-purposed for things like bird-watching and so forth, but are still useful when looking into the sky.

Answer 4

Quality is in the glass and the materials and how the telescope is put together. Inexpensive items, no mater what they are, have to economize somewhere. Usually the somewhere is all the way through and through the process of production and selection of materials.
One does not invest in cheep for the long haul. Cheep is for temporary knowing that the item will not last or preform at the ultimate level.

There is an old saying, "Nikon will never sell you a bad piece of glass."

Answer 5

well not all of them you see, but the only reason for that is that department stores sell them so do not buy them from a department store because they are usually expensive and don't wok as well as the ones that you buy from a place that only sells telescopes like telescopes.com