Hi David,
I have a SW collapsible like Duncan and find it pretty much unbeatable in terms of setup and teardown.
I watched a colleague of my astronomy group packing up a lightbridge directly to his car which was behind him. In the time it took him to disassemble the scope and pack it into the boot, I had collapsed mine, put away all my eyepieces, packed the scope in the car (50m away) collapsed a work table, shut down and packed away my Laptop and packed everything away and then I returned to see him put the last piece of the LB in the boot.
Then I stood there watching him pack everything else away (yes, I DID offer to help)
I think he declined the offer as he was too envious of how easy it was to collapse and pack away my scope (literally 10 seconds to slide down the secondary, lock it in, another 15 secs to remove the handles, then 1 min to put it in the car).
So as a direct comparison, there was no contest. I tried his scope out and found it VERY heavy compared to mine, which is common because the SW has roller bearings on the AZ, but this slickness can be tightened by the centre bolt. In comparison, the teflon AZ bearing on the LB was like it was glued down and hard to move.
The optics of both were almost identical, I tried my Pentax 8.5mm in the LB and it had similar views to mine.
In summary, I recommend the Skywatcher, because of the simplicity of the truss design, operation, optics and price. Plus, it looks the goods too! If you get the Black one instead of the white one I have, it looks even better...!
My 8 year old has no problems "driving" my 12" SW, so your 10 yr old should find it easy too.
Hope this helps. (biased view, I know
)
Cheers
Chris