Home > Consumer Reviews > Meade 114-EQ-DH 4.5" Equatorial Starfinder Reflecting Telescope

A friend of mine purchased this scope. And being an amateur astronomer, I helped him set it up..I found this scope to be a great scope for its class. The tripod is well made and will last for years. The motor control was easy to operate and tracked across the sky correctly. The hand control for right accession (RA) was smooth. Images of Jupiter and Saturn was breath taking. The optics of this scope are well made. The only real flaw is the eye pieces. The scope comes with the .950" size eyepieces ranging from low power to high power and also a 3X barlow. The eyepieces gave good results except the high power piece. The objects became very fuzzy with the high power piece, making it useless. However, by using the lower power eyepieces with the barlow, good images were noted. These low end scope eyepieces are never very good. However, in this case, the tube and assembly are very good. I would recommend that the eyepieces included be thrown away and high quality eyepieces be purchased. One can buy high quality .950" eyepieces or the best solution is to purchase a new screw on adaptor and use 1.25" eyepieces. With these modifications, this scope would rule for a beginer..

Overall, its a great purchase and performs very well indeed.

This is a GREAT starter scope here is what you get.
In the box,
4.5" 910mm focal length main mirror in a nicly made metal tube.
Nice all metal equatorial mount.
All metal tripod, it also seems well made.
One each 25mm, 12.5mm, 4mm eyepiece, .965" heres where I ran into
a problem, it seems the nice people at Meade forgot to put all 3
in the box I got! A call to Meades 800 number took care of the problem. They will also send you a 1.25" eyepiece holder for free
if you ask for one.

This also has motorized TRACKING with hand controller, this is
for TRACKING only and is NOT computerized.
You also get a 3X barlow lens, a 5X25 finder scope.
All I need now is some clear skys!

I too just got this scope and it only comes with a hand controler and motor that allows for tracking objects. The picture on Amazon shows an autostart controller, and when I ordered mine there was only the one review that made it seem like it did come with it. It's been cloudy here at night since I got it so I havn't had the chance to look at much, the little I've seen looked good though. I still haven't deceided if I'm going to send it back, at less then $150 it still seem like a good deal even without the Autostar.

This is a Super Buy for an entry level telescope that isn't a piece of junk like many of the lowerpriced telescopes.I've had several telescopes and last year I bought a cheepie for the kids. When you get a telescope it's not just how good the lenses are and how powerful, but how good the tripod is. If you can't aim the telescope because of a poor tripod, no matter how good the telescope is, it's a piece of junk. This is what happened to the cheepie I bought for the kids. The telescope itself was good but the tripod was junk, so, actually, the entire telescope was junk. At the price of this telescope, you can't beat the deal. C. Jeff Dyrek

I Just recived this telescope and was expecting it to have a autostar controller as shown in the picture- all it comes with is auto tracking - no autostar! I am sending it back. the telescope itself looks pretty good but if you want autostar goto get a different scope.