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I don't think the mirror in mine is brilliant, but certainly very usable: a lot of light gathering power, and much more detail on planets than the 8" is capable of.
Star test is far from textbook though, and at powers much over 200x bright stars do not focus to a clean disk. I have just been checking it out in good seeing at high altitude (well high for Oz at 1400m). Another example of this scope I have seen (Barb & David's) seems to have a better figured mirror.
So I think you can expect a bit of variability in quality of the optics with these scopes. But we are talking about a big 12" mirror for around $600! You cannot expect it to perform like hand-figured ones costing several $1000.
FWIW, I would not consider using this scope for astrophotography. But as you can see from Ken's post, where there is a will ...
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