[Shiraz (Ray)]

Hi Colin. The only reasons to consider buying an EQ8 are that they work very well and don't cost anywhere near as much as other high capacity mounts.

However:
- you will probably not get to "love" the mount - grudging respect maybe, but there is nothing endearing about them
- there is no major pride of ownership - the EQ8 has no bling, polish, exotic name or shiny red anodising, just solid high precision components hidden under a mixed bag of mainly black finishes, a screen print SW logo and a bit of surface rust
- expect to deal with backlash - mine needs to be run with an unbalanced load to produce round stars (this also means that it cannot be fully automated)
- expect to get a hernia if you use it as a mobile mount - these things are big and heavy
- the low res incremental encoders are useless for imaging - but it does have homing index points for automatic reset of the ring counters though
- from my experience, Skywatcher is completely uninterested in their existing customers and local support looks to be very limited - a "you bought it, your problem" type of approach, so you will be relying on other users for advice on how to tune and maintain the mount and probably on a European vendor for any bits that you might need.

Having said all that, I do not regret getting an EQ8. I recently looked at upgrading, but couldn't really see any way that a more expensive mount would give better results. Mine has genuine 7 arcsec p-p PE, runs all night without supervision under EQMOD/SGpro, doesn't notice a 20+kg load and guides within the seeing (in an ROR obs) in "sea breezes" up to 25kts.

all the best with your choice