There’s a universal moment of wonder that strikes us all. We look up at a vast, ink-black sky, sprinkled with the distant glitter of stars and the serene glow of the Moon, and we feel an innate pull to see closer. I remember that feeling as a child, armed with a pair of cheap binoculars in my back garden, straining to make out the craters on the lunar surface. The dream was always to have a ‘real’ telescope, but the thought was intimidating. Weren’t they complex, heavy, and incredibly expensive? This barrier of entry keeps countless would-be astronomers from ever taking that first step, leaving their curiosity tethered to Earth. The fear of a steep learning curve and a significant financial investment can extinguish the spark of cosmic exploration before it ever truly ignites. The OYS 70mm Aperture Refractor Telescope for Beginners with Tripod aims to shatter that barrier, promising an accessible, all-in-one package to turn that backyard curiosity into a genuine cosmic adventure. But can a telescope this affordable and user-friendly truly deliver the heavens? We decided to find out.
- 【Quality Optics】The astronomical telescope features 400mm (f/5.7) focal length and large 70mm aperture, fully multi-coated optical glass with high transmission, creating stunning images with...
- 【Variable Magnification】The refractor telescope includes two 1.25" telescope eyepieces (K20mm and K9mm) for 20X and 44X magnification. The 5x24 finder scope makes locating objects easily. And...
What to Consider Before Buying a Beginner’s Telescope
A telescope is more than just an item; it’s a key solution for bridging the immense gap between us and the cosmos. It’s a scientific instrument designed to solve the fundamental problem of distance, gathering faint light from celestial objects and magnifying them to reveal details invisible to the naked eye. For a beginner, the primary benefit is discovery—transforming the Moon from a flat disc into a three-dimensional world of mountains and craters, revealing the moons of Jupiter, or splitting a distant point of light into a beautiful double star. It turns an abstract interest in space into a tangible, awe-inspiring hobby that can be shared with family and friends, fostering a lifelong love for science and exploration.
The ideal customer for this type of product is someone facing the very hurdles I mentioned: a family with curious children, a student just starting their astronomy journey, or an adult looking for a casual, portable hobby without a major commitment. They value simplicity, portability, and immediate results. This telescope is for those who want to go from unboxing to observing the Moon in under an hour. Conversely, it might not be suitable for those who are already deep into the hobby and desire to image faint nebulae or galaxies. Serious astrophotographers or amateur researchers who require powerful tracking mounts and large apertures for deep-sky observation would find this model limiting and should consider more advanced systems like a Schmidt-Cassegrain or a large Dobsonian reflector.
Before investing, consider these crucial points in detail:
- Aperture & Optics: Aperture (the diameter of the main lens, in this case, 70mm) is the single most important factor. It determines the telescope’s light-gathering ability; the bigger the aperture, the brighter and clearer the image, allowing you to see fainter objects. For a beginner’s scope, 70mm is a great starting point, perfect for detailed views of the Moon and the brightest planets. Also, look for “Fully Multi-Coated” optics, which means multiple anti-reflective coatings are on all air-to-glass surfaces, maximizing light transmission for sharper views.
- Mount & Tripod Stability: A telescope is only as good as its mount. An alt-azimuth (AZ) mount, which moves up-down and left-right, is the most intuitive for beginners. However, the stability of the accompanying tripod is paramount. A wobbly tripod will render even the best optics useless, as any slight vibration will be magnified, making it impossible to focus. While lightweight tripods are great for portability, there’s often a trade-off in stability.
- Focal Length & Magnification: Focal length (here, 400mm) influences the telescope’s magnification potential. Magnification is calculated by dividing the telescope’s focal length by the eyepiece’s focal length (e.g., 400mm / 20mm eyepiece = 20x). Don’t be fooled by claims of extreme magnification (500x!) on beginner scopes; this is often “empty magnification” that results in a dim, blurry image. A useful magnification range for a 70mm scope is between 15x and 120x. The included 20x and 44x magnifications are perfectly suited to its capabilities.
- Ease of Use & Accessories: A beginner’s telescope should be a complete package that encourages use, not frustration. Look for tool-free assembly, a helpful finder scope for locating objects, and useful accessories like a smartphone adapter and carrying case. These additions significantly enhance the overall experience, transforming the telescope from a piece of equipment into a complete, ready-to-go exploration kit. The OYS 70mm Aperture Refractor Telescope for Beginners with Tripod includes all of these, making it an especially compelling package.
While the OYS 70mm Aperture Refractor Telescope for Beginners with Tripod is an excellent choice, it’s always wise to see how it stacks up against the competition. For a broader look at all the top models, we highly recommend checking out our complete, in-depth guide:
- High quality optics: Our F30070 astronomical refracting telescope with Phone Adapter an aperture of 70mmand a focal length of 300mm,and a large objective lens plus multi-layer broadband coating, can...
- 🌕🌕 EXPAND YOUR FIELD of VIEW 🌕🌕 The astronomical telescope has a 70mm aperture and a 400mm focal length, which provides a wider and clearer field of view than 60mm/50mm focal lengths....
- Beginner telescope: Explore the Moon's craters and star clusters in vivid detail with a 70 mm glass lens, sparking curiosity and enhancing every stargazing moment.
First Impressions: The All-in-One Astronomy Backpack
Our experience with the OYS 70mm Aperture Refractor Telescope for Beginners with Tripod began not with a cumbersome box, but with a surprisingly compact and lightweight backpack. This immediately sets the tone; this is a telescope designed for adventure. Unzipping the bag revealed every component neatly secured in its own compartment. The optical tube felt solid yet incredibly light, and the aluminium tripod was feather-light. The entire package, weighing just under a kilogram, is a game-changer for portability. One user review we read mentioned carrying it on a bus to the beach, and holding the packed bag, we could absolutely see that being a reality.
Assembly was refreshingly simple. Following the clear, picture-based instructions, we went from a collection of parts to a fully assembled telescope in about ten minutes, no tools required. This aligns perfectly with feedback from users who reported setup times ranging from 5 to 20 minutes. Everything fits together intuitively: the tripod legs extend, the optical tube slots onto the AZ mount, the finder scope clicks into place, and the eyepiece is secured with a simple thumbscrew. For a beginner, especially a child or young adult, this frustration-free setup is a critical first victory. The initial impression is of a thoughtfully designed kit that prioritizes getting you outside and looking up, not bogged down with a complicated manual. You can see the full feature set and included accessories on its product page.
Key Benefits
- Exceptional Portability: Comes with a custom backpack and weighs under 1kg, making it a true “grab-and-go” instrument.
- Effortless Assembly: Intuitive design and clear instructions allow for tool-free setup in minutes, perfect for beginners.
- Complete Starter Kit: Includes two eyepieces, a finder scope, a phone adapter, and a tripod—everything needed for a first night out.
- Great Lunar and Terrestrial Views: The 70mm fully multi-coated lens provides bright, clear images of the Moon, planets, and daytime objects.
Potential Drawbacks
- Lightweight Tripod Lacks Rigidity: The tripod can feel flimsy and prone to vibrations, requiring a gentle touch during focusing and viewing.
- Phone Adapter Requires Patience: Aligning a smartphone camera with the eyepiece can be a finicky and time-consuming process.
Deep Dive: Performance Under the Night Sky
A telescope’s true test happens under the stars. We took the OYS 70mm Aperture Refractor Telescope for Beginners with Tripod out over several nights, ranging from a light-polluted suburban garden to a darker rural location, to assess its real-world performance across its key features.
From Box to Backyard: Assembly and Ultimate Portability
The standout feature of this telescope is undeniably its portability. The entire system—tube, tripod, and all accessories—packs neatly into the provided backpack. This isn’t just a convenient extra; it fundamentally defines the user experience. We found ourselves grabbing it on a whim to catch a rising full moon or take a quick look at Jupiter, something we’d never do with a larger, heavier scope. This ease of transport is a recurring theme in user feedback, with many praising how light and easy it is to carry anywhere. One new user celebrated being able to take it on public transport, opening up observing spots beyond their own backyard.
The assembly process lived up to its promise of simplicity. The main components click and screw together logically. We intentionally tried to assemble it in low light and found it manageable, a crucial test for any astronomical gear. The picture-based instructions are sufficient, though as one user noted, some parts can be a little small to decipher. However, the design is so straightforward that after the first assembly, the manual becomes redundant. This ease of setup is critical for maintaining a child’s enthusiasm or for an adult who doesn’t want to spend an hour tinkering before they can observe. The focus is squarely on the experience, not the equipment, which is exactly what a beginner’s instrument should do.
Optical Performance: What Can You Really See?
With a 70mm aperture and 400mm focal length, we had realistic expectations. This isn’t a Hubble replacement, but an instrument designed to open a new window on our celestial neighbourhood. We first turned it to the Moon, and the view was genuinely breathtaking. Using the lower-power K20mm eyepiece (20x), the entire lunar disc fit comfortably in the field of view, sharp and bright. Swapping to the K9mm eyepiece (44x) brought us closer, revealing stunning detail in the craters around the terminator (the line between light and shadow). The fully multi-coated optics performed well, providing good contrast and minimizing glare. This experience was mirrored by numerous users, with one stating you can see the Moon “espectacular,” and another exclaiming they spent “all night watching it” during a supermoon. This is the “wow” moment that hooks a beginner.
Moving to the planets, we were able to easily spot Jupiter. At 44x magnification, it appeared as a distinct, bright disc, and excitingly, we could clearly make out its four Galilean moons as tiny, sharp points of light lined up beside it. This was a fantastic sight and confirms a user’s report of capturing an image of Jupiter and its moons. Saturn’s rings were just barely discernible as a slight elongation of the planet, a challenging but rewarding target for this scope. While you won’t see the cloud bands on Jupiter or the Cassini Division in Saturn’s rings, the ability to identify these worlds and their key features is a major achievement for a telescope at this price point. It successfully delivers on its promise of making the solar system accessible. The crisp views it offers of our moon are alone worth the modest investment for any budding astronomer.
The Astrophotography Starter Kit: Using the Phone Adapter
Including a smartphone adapter in a beginner’s kit is a stroke of genius. The ability to not just see, but capture and share your discoveries is a massive draw, especially for younger users. The adapter works by clamping onto the eyepiece while a separate clamp holds your phone. Our experience with it was a lesson in patience, confirming the feedback from several users who found it “a little difficult” to get perfectly aligned. The key is to first get the object centered in the eyepiece, then attach the adapter and carefully adjust the phone’s position until the bright circle of light from the eyepiece appears on your screen. It took us a few tries, but the effort paid off.
We captured some surprisingly good images of the Moon’s cratered surface. The photos retained a good amount of detail and served as a fantastic memento of the observing session. As users have shared, getting “amazing pictures of the moon” is well within reach. It’s important to note that the adapter’s design may struggle with phones that have large, off-center camera bumps, as one iPhone 11 user pointed out. However, for most standard smartphones, it gets the job done. This feature, while imperfect, transforms the telescope into a simple astrophotography tool and is a powerful way to engage with the hobby. Being able to share a photo you took of another world is an experience that can truly ignite a passion for astronomy, and it’s a feature that really sets this kit apart in the beginner market.
Handling and Stability: The Mount and Tripod Experience
The telescope uses an alt-azimuth (AZ) mount, which is ideal for beginners. The simple “point-and-shoot” motion of moving it left, right, up, and down is far more intuitive than the more complex equatorial mounts found on advanced scopes. It also makes the telescope excellent for daytime terrestrial viewing, like bird watching, as the included diagonal prism provides a correct, upright image. However, the system’s main weakness, as highlighted by several users, is the tripod and the precision of the mount’s movements. We found the tripod to be very lightweight, which is great for portability but comes at the cost of stability. When fully extended, it can be susceptible to vibrations from wind or even from just touching the focus knob.
We learned to use a very gentle touch when focusing and to allow a second for vibrations to settle before viewing. A user rightly noted that the “tripod is flimsy and the mount will sag,” which can make centering an object at high magnification challenging. The panhandle for moving the scope is functional, but lacks the fine-tune adjustment knobs of more expensive mounts. One user wished this movement could be improved, and we agree that it can be tricky to make tiny adjustments without overshooting your target. The best practice we found was to locate the object with the low-power eyepiece first, then carefully switch to the higher power. While it’s a clear area for improvement, these are understandable compromises to keep the telescope so affordable and portable. For steady viewing on grass, as one user confirmed, it is perfectly adequate.
What Other Users Are Saying
The consensus among users is overwhelmingly positive, especially when viewing the OYS 70mm Aperture Refractor Telescope for Beginners with Tripod through the lens of its intended audience: newcomers, families, and gift-givers. The themes of easy assembly, fantastic portability, and great value are mentioned repeatedly. One happy customer, who bought it for their nine-year-old granddaughter, said “She loved it. It’s pretty cool how you can take photos with your phone!” Another called it the “perfect for beginners,” recounting the story of receiving it on the day of a supermoon and spending the entire night captivated. This sentiment that it’s an “excellent telescope for beginners” and a “perfect Christmas or birthday gift” is the most common takeaway.
However, the feedback isn’t without its critiques, which provides a balanced and realistic picture. The most consistent point of criticism is the tripod’s stability. As one user bluntly put it, “The tripod is flimsy and the mount will sag, which are the main reasons why it’s hard to center the object or do the fine tunes.” Others mention the finicky nature of the phone adapter and the slight learning curve required to get everything focused. This feedback is crucial as it sets realistic expectations: this is a fantastic entry-level instrument, but it has the limitations inherent to its price point and lightweight design. The overall satisfaction suggests that for most buyers, the pros far outweigh these cons, making the purchase a very worthwhile one for starting a new hobby.
How Does the OYS 70mm Compare to the Alternatives?
While the OYS 70mm is a strong contender in its class, the telescope market is vast. Here’s how it stacks up against three notable alternatives that cater to different needs and budgets.
1. Celestron NexStar 8SE Computerized Telescope
- NEXSTAR COMPUTERISED TELESCOPE: The NexStar 8SE computerised telescope features celestron’s iconic orange tube design with updated technology and the latest features for amazing stargazing for...
- 8-INCH APERTURE: The eight-inch primary mirror in this Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope for adults and kids to be used together packs enough light-gathering ability to observe the best that our solar...
The Celestron NexStar 8SE represents a massive leap in both capability and price. This is a serious instrument for the dedicated hobbyist. Its key feature is a fully computerized “GoTo” mount that can automatically find and track thousands of celestial objects for you. With its huge 8-inch (203mm) aperture, it gathers vastly more light than the OYS, enabling detailed views of distant galaxies and nebulae. This isn’t a competitor so much as an upgrade path. If you buy the OYS, fall in love with the hobby, and decide you want to pursue it seriously, the NexStar 8SE is the kind of powerful, user-friendly system you might aspire to own one day.
2. SOLOMARK 130EQ Newtonian Reflector Telescope
- 【130mm Large Aperture】Large aperture 130mm telescope, high resolution, good light collecting ability, imaging brighter, more suitable for the observation of deep space celestial objective.
- 【High Quality Optics】The telescope adopts a sturdy and light fram structure, the carbon fiber was covering on the telescope surface, sophisticated technology. Objective lens features fully-coated...
The SOLOMARK 130EQ is a great intermediate step between the OYS and a high-end computerized scope. As a Newtonian reflector, it offers a much larger 130mm aperture for a relatively low cost, providing significantly more light-gathering power for viewing fainter objects. Its equatorial (EQ) mount is designed to track the rotation of the Earth, making it easier to keep objects in the eyepiece for extended periods—a boon for group viewing or astrophotography. However, this EQ mount requires polar alignment and has a steeper learning curve than the OYS’s simple AZ mount, making the SOLOMARK better suited for a dedicated beginner who is willing to invest a bit more time to learn the ropes.
3. Celestron Travel Scope 80mm Refractor Telescope
- ALL-IN-ONE TELESCOPE KIT: The Celestron 80mm Travel Scope features fully-coated glass optics, a potent 80mm objective lens, and a lightweight frame
- POWERFUL EYEPIECES FOR UP-CLOSE VIEWING: Our telescope for astronomy beginners is equipped with two eyepieces (20mm and 10mm) that provide low- and high-power views, which means you can observe...
The Celestron Travel Scope 80 is perhaps the most direct competitor to the OYS 70mm. It follows the same “grab-and-go” philosophy with a refractor design, a lightweight tripod, and an included backpack. The Celestron boasts a slightly larger 80mm aperture, which will give it a slight edge in light-gathering ability, potentially providing marginally brighter images. However, the OYS often includes a more comprehensive accessory package out of the box, specifically the smartphone adapter which is a major selling point. The choice between these two will likely come down to current pricing and which accessory bundle better suits your immediate needs, as both offer a fantastic, portable introduction to astronomy.
Our Final Verdict: Is the OYS 70mm Telescope Worth It?
After extensive testing and poring over user feedback, our verdict on the OYS 70mm Aperture Refractor Telescope for Beginners with Tripod is a resounding yes, provided you are the right user. This is not a telescope for the seasoned amateur astronomer chasing faint fuzzies. Instead, it is arguably one of the best all-in-one packages available for someone taking their very first step into the universe. Its genius lies in its accessibility. It removes the traditional barriers of high cost, complex setup, and cumbersome weight, replacing them with a simple, lightweight, and genuinely fun experience.
Its optical performance on the Moon and bright planets is more than enough to inspire awe and spark a lasting passion. The inclusion of a backpack and phone adapter transforms it from a mere optical instrument into a complete exploration kit ready for adventure. While the lightweight tripod demands a gentle hand, this is a reasonable trade-off for its incredible portability and affordability. If you are looking for the perfect gift for a curious child, a fun and educational tool for your family, or an easy, no-fuss way to satisfy your own stargazing curiosity, you will be hard-pressed to find a better value. It’s a wonderful gateway to the cosmos. Check the latest price and start your astronomical journey tonight.
Last update on 2025-11-09 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API