The reason I gave the mount and ease of use a "9" is that it is a little stiff when rotating in azimuth. This is the 4th telescope I have purchased in a month. First one was actually an X-mas gift from my wife. A celestron 60GT. I returned it after doing a little research on the web. Bought a Meade DS2114AT from the Discovery Channel store because I had to get a scope as soon as possible. After returning the first one for a shoddy mount, I got the second one assebled o.k. Well, after trying in vain to get anything to come into focus numerous nights, and dealing with the cheap plastic focuser that moved up and down every time you turned the focus knob, and the vibrating mount that was just flat out unacceptable, I returned this one too. After researching much much more, I decided upon the XT6. As soon as I had it assempled I could tell it was better quality. No play in the focuser. All metal parts. Still collimated right out of the box. Had to wait 7 days before I got a clear enough night to check it out. Man, was I giddy! The moon? Simply amazing. Saturn and the cissini division. Jupiter and it's cloud belts and 4 moons a piece of cake for this azazing scope. It cost me the same as the Meade after s&h, and about $100 more than the Celestron, but you cannot, CANNOT compare these scopes. The celsetron was actually better than the meade. But this 6" Dob blew me away. Absolutely for the money, this has to be the best thing out there. If anyone has something better, I'd like to know! So after going through 3 other scopes, this is absolutely the hands down winner.

Overall Rating: 9
Optics:10 Mount:9 Ease of Use:9 Value:10
Weight: 10
Date: 01/21/2002 06:08:40 am PST

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