Telescope Reviews: New Skywatcher Mounts

Its what was being touted at Astrofest - heard it from someone else as well as being posted as the price. It would sound about right - where I would expect Synta to pitch.

I saw the mount last year at Astrofest when it was still a prototype and dubbed as being the EQ-7 - about 4 grand would be about right - maybe a touch more. Last year Synta rep suggested it would land at about £5k.

Synta arent silly and my bet is they will aim it about 4k - it puts it far enough away from the EQ6 so it doesnt spoil any EQ6 sales and pitches it underneath most of the big league to do them harm - thats what I would do for sure if I were marketing it. I might even drop it down to £3700 to blow a hole right into the middle market in Europe at least.

On the other hand, depending on performance of it maybe Synta will go for some of the bigger league stuff and up the price like they have with their new Esprite series APOs.

£4k seems to be the beat on the street. How close that is is anyones guess right now until they are in the shops.

The new EQ6 is appealing to me depending on price. The existing EQ6 is too heavy for me but a 25% weight saving would bring it down to almost the weight of an HEQ5 (not including the comparative difference in tripod weights).
The basic guts will be tried and tested and of course Synscan is well debugged by now and with the sparkly new hand controller it might be just the bizz. They are probably geared up to give Meade a quick spanking and maybe kill off/damage/carpet bomb LX80 sales with the new EQ6 Alt/Az.

That might mean also the HEQ5 is due for removal from the line up depending on the new Alt/Az EQ6s price OR it could mean bargain HEQ5s and a big price drop on HEQ5s to hoover up the lower end sales.

Who knows - dropping the HEQ5 into a lower price band while punching hard with the new EQ6 might put a real crimp into Meades plans for the LX80 while the new EQ8 deals Meade another punch to its LX800. Its certainly interesting to sit on the sidelines and eat popcorn in the big fight

Give it another 10 years and this stuff will be in bubble wrap and carded for sale at the supermarket checkout and a £10k mount will buy you something like the stuff that costs £30k today. Alternately the oil could run out and we'll all be back to making our own mirrors and turning out wooden boxes to put them in

Edited by astro_baby (02/14/12 02:07 PM)