Celestron Astro Fi 90 Wi-Fi Refractor Wireless Refracting Telescope, Black (22201)

My friend bought a beginner’s telescope from another manufacturer. Yes, it was $100 less but EVERYTHING wasplastic and the finder scope could not be aligned or used. By just spending $100 more you get:1) Excellent all metal build quality including thumb screws for swapping lens & accessories2) a finder scope (only thing plastic besides lens covers) that actually works very well3) AND you also get WiFi and Skyportal for your cell phone to align scope and then with its great graphics touch and have the scope find and (most important) track an object4) Has (in the case of the Astro Fi 90) a dew protector on front of the scopeNow on the reviews which frankly gave me pause/concern on this purchase.We used two different brand (Motorola, Samsung) 3 year old $80 cell phones (one at a time). The WiFi worked from 50 foot away. The Skyportal app worked well on each. These phones are kept up-to-date but not crud-ed up with a lot of apps. The printed manual said to make sure the switch on the scope is to the left before connecting the cell phone via WiFi to the scope which is incorrect. Celestron has since corrected that and you will see it when downloading the same manual from their site. The switch should be set to the RIGHT and is set that way right out of the box. Each phone connected to the scope in 15 seconds after pressing the Connect and Align or Connect button on the phone’s screen. The Skyportal app lets you nudge the scope to center the item you are aligning if you slide the yellow rate slider towards the left. Batteries – still working after 5 nights of viewing about 6 hours per night.I think the key is relax, be patient and take your time when aligning. After some practice/experience gained about 10-15 minutes total to align 3 separate objects (planet/star). Make sure to align the finder scope to the scope in the daytime per included instructions first. I've got it to a point where if the red dot is over the object it is centered in the lens. This alignment process is all worth it. Once done when you take a tour of the sky and touch an object (ex: Jupiter) on the phone's screen, the scope moves to it and stays centered in the lens even after a hour. One time the connection dropped – I just ended the app; started it back up on the same phone that alignment was done; reconnected and didn’t have to do the alignment again.The term beginner’s means you will see planets in our case of light polluted skies from Saturn (and its rings) to Venus and the moon is awesome. You can also see Jupiter’s moons and brown ring clouds. If you want to see galaxies or nebula you need to go to the $1000 range for an 8 inch or more aperture scope. But the money saved allows for buying accessories (lens, etc.) that also work with the more expensive scopes.This review based on Astro Fi 90 scope purchased on 7/2019 at $289 to celebrate 50-year anniversary of man landing on the moon. Planet viewing from Pgh PA. Celestron seems to improve their products so some other reviews might be for scopes purchased before this date.10/1/2019 - UpdateTelescope continues to work well - no problems to report.Captured this picture of the moon with the included 25mm lens and purchased Smart Phone Adapter accessory.7/14/2020Almost a year old - no problems to report - rock solid build quality.Captured this picture of Jupiter using Celestron 8 to 24mm 1.25 Zoom Eyepiece.

I love this telescope it is so light weight and isn't as unsteady as it is described

I thought i was going to be able to control and see what the telescope saw from my phone. Apparently you can only control the telescope from the phone. You still need to look through the telescopes eyepiece to see what it sees.

This product would probably be pretty great if it worked. It doesn't. First night out the Wi-Fi signal kept dropping. Thanks to another Amazon review I learned a solution here was to wrap a piece of wire or USB cable around the base of the mount to act as an antenna. Ugly, but it worked. Worked as far as cutting down on the number of dropped signals that is. The. app still crashed. Constantly.Second night out I had to re-solder the battery pack wires. A ten minute job, but should I really have to be doing this on a brand new piece of equipment? They need to have a little talk with whoever is doing this work for them in China.Don't count on the alignment procedure being nearly as easy as advertised. Most of the time you go through the procedure and it simply says "alignment failed " What went wrong? How can I improve my chances of it working next time? You are given not a clue. I probably got it aligned on about 30% of my attempts, invariably just in time for the app to crash again. The longest I was probably aligned and good to go was 5 minutes.For those 5 minutes though, it was a great piece of equipment, ugly wire around the bottom and all.Fourth night out the motor in the mount stopped working, and I gave up. Thanks for a wonderful 5 minutes of moon viewing Celestron, but I'm breaking up with you to find someone who's up for a more long term relationship.Don't buy this. Seriously.

Like other reviewers have said, it's difficult to maintain the wireless while you are calibrating your phone app to the scope. The first point is easy to lock in, but the connection fails after that and you have to start over. Also, they should get a bunch of users together and watch them try to calibrate, maybe that would help them write better instructions, or at least improve the FAQ section of the webpage. It's a clever idea for the price, if it worked. Can't Celestron issue a software upgrade to their SkyPortal App? I've called tech support and you can hear the weariness in their voice, I don't think even THEY consider the AstroFi a "real" telescope.

Nice telescope. Understanding how to calibrate the unit and use the app was a bit confusing. After figuring out how it works, the companion app is awesome! I would recommend this unit.

Love it!

Great Product

For the price I couldn't pass it up. Now I'm getting older it's getting hard to set up my 8inch schmitt cassigrain, this scope is so much easier. I've heard things about the wifi but there have been updates since. Providing you set up correctly it works, watch utube videos just waiting for it to stop raining.

Very useful first telescope I bought for my son. It works ok with the app although I would advice to look into YouTube videos for correctly aligning the telescope. Other that this it has great magnification and easy to set up and run. We were quite happy to spot and see the Moon and its craters but also a clear image of Jupyter and its satellites!