Home > Consumer Reviews > Meade mySKY Personal Guide for Sky Exploration

As a budding backyard astronomer, I was hoping for an aid to my exploration. I bought this pretty much on release and now, about a year later and after getting the latest software shipped to me by Meade, I have decided to call this a total loss. Out of the box, it had an "identify" function that was supposed to allow me to point to a celestial object and the mySKY would identify it. I never got that far as the mySKY could not ever get calibrated (i.e. GPS fix). I thought it was me and so I would pull it out of the box every few months but I could never get it to work. I finally called tech support and after having to pay for the latest software which was on backorder for a month, I received the "definitive" software edition. Now, you have to pick the nearest city (i.e. you can't define your own location) and then allow the sensors "adjust." I don't know if this means it is attempting to get a GPS fix but it does do this rather quickly. This got me excited and I hoped that it would finally work as advertised. I shouldn't have been surprised that the excitement quickly went away when the identify function was no longer in the software. You can pick a star or constellation from a whole slew of them (it lists items not even visible in your location at the current time) and it will try to direct you to it but trying to get the lights and your vision aligned is a miserable experience. That Meade still lists this thing at $399 is shameful. In my opinion, it should be a $25-50 toy sold in the toy department of your local superstore. I'll be buying a Celestron SkyScout which is what I should have bought in the first place. I've never written an Amazon review before but felt obligated to warn nice people from buying this worthless product.

I tried to rate it as ZERO stars but I'm forced to give it the undeserved single star.

Oh my goodness. I should have visited the review forums before buying this overpriced miserable piece of junk.

The quality of the materials is well below what you might expect of a $300 device (valued at $500 by Meade). Without exaggeration, I must tell you that I have seen happy meal prizes of better construction and made of better materials. The resolution of the video screen when viewing the skymap is comparable to images produced by an Atari 2600. (for those of you who may have just crawled out from under a rock...the Atari 2600 was a video game system produced in the late 70s...yes the skymap is rivaled by technology of 30 years ago)

It is completely worthless as an educational tool. When I first pulled it out of the box I pointed at Polaris...bing, it told me all about Polaris. Then I directed it towards the stars of Cygnus...bong, it got every one of them wrong (a very jumpy screen that is always about 5 degrees off of what I am pointing at).Frustrated, I made a list of accurate readings...out of twenty-five visible stars, my Mysky named two correctly (and I held that thing as steady as can reasonable be expected of a human being). I then tried the 'goto' function. This is where you pick an object from a list and the mySky directs you to it with arrows and a crosshair. When you point the device close to the object the crosshair appears. I think the crosshair is supposed to represent the position of the object, but it keeps jumping around on the screen. Choose something like Deneb and point the mySky in the general direction of Cygnus and the crosshair bee-bops around the image of the constellation on the screen as if Deneb is not fixed relative to the constellation. Unless you were asking the device to find the Moon, I doubt an amateur could learn anything about location of celestial objects from this device. I you don't already know the layout of the night sky do NOT expect this device to help you. Considering the materials are utterly & unbelievably cheap and the functions are accurate less than 10% of time, why does Meade say that this thing is valued at 500 dollars? I know that they are currently selling for $300, but think of what you can get for $300. One electronic gadget that comes to mind is a new 3G iphone ($299). Have you seen the functionality of that thing! I know they have two wildly different functions but...one is an electronic gadget with lights, video screen, and buttons and the other is an electronic gadget with lights, video screen, and buttons. One is a multifunctional device and one is dedicated to identifying celestial objects. One works amazingly well in performing its multifunctions and the other cannot adequately perform its singular purpose.

I really would like to know what the magazine reviewers for this device received for their favorable reviews. Either the reviewers are simpleminded morons who are easily impressed by flashing red lights or their reviews are easily bought.

Good Grief. Do not waste your money on this thing. It is a worthless piece of junk.

I hate "flame" reviews and I've never written one before, but this product deserves it. I bought my unit after the software upgrade, so Meade had a chance to work out some of the bugs. They (maybe) have fixed the programming, but the unit still suffers mechanically and never worked as intended. For the first couple of month of service the unit worked, but rarely achieved a pointing accuracy of better than 3-5 degrees--far too inaccurate to consistently locate stars and planets, and often too coarse to correctly identify constellations. This morning, after a month of sitting idle, I took it outside again and discovered that two of the switches didn't function. I opened up the out-of-warrantee unit to discover that the metal contact plates on two of the microswitches had broken free, and were floating around inside the case. These are held in place by four tiny plastic tabs that simply are not up to the task of resisting the forces of normal use. Other microswitches in the unit showed that one or more tabs had broken, so all were on their way to failure.

I am strongly of the opinion that Meade rushed into the market with this product to compete with a similar unit sold by Celestron; their haste shows.

The idea and concept for this makes it a wonderful way to learn and explore the night sky. This product is Made in China and lives up to the expectations that China has set. First I noticed that the volume up press button did not click back up. The volume down worked fine...so you could say there was no sound. I put new batteries in about 4 different times trying different configurations and still it would not power up. I gave it two stars because if Meade got the quality improved I would purchase it again. I am sending this one back today.

I've always been interested in the night sky, and anxiously awaited my MySky. Set up was easy, it took about 10 minutes to read the instructions and I was ready to take it outside. It worked as advertised, identifying planets (Jupiter), stars and constellations. A few days later I took it to a small party, and everybody from a 5 year old (with a little help) to adults thought it was great. I think it'll be great to take on camping trips as well, when the sky is really filled with stars.