View Single Post
  #3  
Old 15-07-2013, 12:39 PM
mental4astro's Avatar
mental4astro (Alexander)
kids+wife+scopes=happyman

mental4astro is offline
 
Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: sydney, australia
Posts: 5,005
Hi Chris,

Essentially these are the same scope. The Saxon is just a rebranded Skywatcher (Skywatcher is owned by a Chinese company called Synta, who also owns Tasco, Celestron, Saxon, Jason, Konus, and a host of others, plus puts the 'house name' on other brands. The Bintel dob is made by GSO, a Taiwanese company, just branded as Bintel.

Both of these scopes will perform very well. The only real difference between them is two: the friction control mechanism, and the focuser. Neither one of these two dobs are really well balanced instruments, so they rely on friction controls to deal with heavy eyepieces. The problem with these is the action changes as you increase and decrease the braking pressure. The focuser on the Saxon I don't think is as good as the Bintel's. That's where the cost trade-off with these scopes, they cut corners somewhere or other to make the scope cheap.

BUT, the good news is that the optics on either one of these scope is very good! Mass produced mirrors have come a long way, which is a blessing. The quality of these mirrors I think is good enough to last you a very, very long time (eventually the coatings on the mirror will need to be replaced, but not for many, many years).

If the choice was mine as to which scope, I would go the Bintel. The money you save over the Saxon you can use to get a couple of Superview eyepieces, a collimating eyepiece, and maybe an OIII filter. You'll be kitted out to years to come!

Mental.
Reply With Quote