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I own the a 2.5X TV Powermate, 2X Orion Shorty Plus (Celestron Ultima) and a 2" 1.6X Antares barlows. I am not an imager and these are all used for visual astronomy only. With shorter eye-relief simple eyepieces like my UO HD orthos the difference in quality between the Powermate and the Shorty Plus are not great and you can be completely satisfied with the performance of the Shorty Plus. When used with complex eyepieces with long eye-relief like Pentax XW's or TV Radians the TV powermate is in a class all by itself. Importantly it preserves the 20mm of eye-relief and doesn't extend it into the next paddock, maintaining the comfort and ease of holding the exit pupil of the native eyepiece. The powermate gets out of the way and you don't even know its there. Even though the shorty plus still delivers good image quality on axis you always know "something" is there other than the native eyepiece. I have to say the $AUS300 I spent on the Powermate has been 1 of my more astute astronomical purchases over the years.
CS-John B
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