Very nice review Peter!
Congratulations! As you can tell by my signature, I'm a user of a similar 114mm Tasco scope (but longer FL), and I'm rapt in it! Had it for over two years now, and am very pleased with its performance. Started with a "plastic fantastic" small refractor - this was a big step up! I have got over any "aperture fever" I may have had early on, and am completely satisfied with the scope. Mind you, I do have very dark skies too, and I lashed out on reasonably decent eyepieces (Celestron X-Cel, not exactly Naglers but great all-round performers on these scopes - nice Plossls would be perfectly adequate).
I use almost exclusively about 50x magnification (just under with 21mm EP in my scope), only going up on bright stuff like planets and the moon, and the odd DSO that will handle higher mags at this aperture (eg Dumbbell Nebula). The views are awesome - bright pinpoint stars against a black background.
DSOs? People say you won't see much in these scopes, but it's not true. With practice, the sky's the limit! Well, not quite true, there are limits as with any scope
. But now I'm hunting down and seeing faint galaxies around the mag 12-13 range, and I've seen over a hundred globular clusters down to middle 11s. So you can imagine the detail you can draw out of brighter DSOs, again with practice. Tons of detail on Jupiter including clear shadow transits, Cassini Div on Saturn, etc. Of course, these objects/features simply weren't there when I first used the scope.
The other thing with these beginner's scopes with EQ mounts is that they are excellent training for later on, if you decide to get into imaging. They teach you the apparent movements of the stars, and the mechanics of locating or following celestial objects. All good grounding that you don't get with a basic dob. With or without motors, they also may satisfy the need in some beginners for a bit of good mechanical action and complexity going on, rather than a dumb push-and-pull.
Anyway, anyone got a Obsession for sale?
Cheers -