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Hi John and welcome to IIS
Firstly I have owned one of the scopes (the 130mm Saxon F1309EQMS) and while the scope has some reasonable features and in the hands of a reasonably experienced user can be quite useful, for a beginner it would be a big no-no and a nearly complete waste of money. Aperture is king in this game and a 130mm scope has just enough aperture to dimly show you the brighters DSO's and you can see some things on Jupiter and Saturns rings, but thats about it. If you live in the city is will show almost nothing. The mount is an equatorial style which looks impressive but requires quite a bit of practice to get used to. In other posts I have already said that in the first week of getting an 8" dob I found more objects than in a whole year of using this scope.
Don't get fooled by motors, when I was using mine I could count on one hand the number of times I actually used the motor. It is only used to keep objects in view as they move, not to find them, and will only work if you have done a reasoable job of polar aligning in the first place which is never easy for a beginner to do initially.
The little Skywatcher 130mm scope is an actual Go To and while I have no experience with this item, Go To these days are pretty reasonable and accurate, however in that price you are giving away a lot of aperture for the Go To capacity and it is no good being able to find things with the go to if you cannot see them because the aperture is to small.
If you want my advice, buying a scope for someone else is fraught with danger, you can wend up getting them something they don't use. Why not ring Bintel (they have a shop in Camberwell and give great service) and ask them if they with do a gift voucher then take the lucky person there to look at scopes and find one they really will use!
Malcolm
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