Telescope Reviews: LX90...LX200...LX400......What's the Difference?

LX90, LX90 LNT, LX90GPS: (discontinued but many on the used market)

SCT optics, lightest most portable fork mount, Autostar 497 with ~40,000 goto objects (but most of them are star catalogs)

LX90-ACF:

Looks exactly the same as the above but it has Meade's new ACF optics

LX200GPS (also recently discontinued):

Same optical tubes as the LX90 GPS, but adds a much bulkier, stiffer fork mount, upgraded motors and electronics (they advertised lower periodic error in the drives than the LX90). While the optics itself is the same, a mirror lock is added to the tube and it also comes with a ~1"-travel motorfocuser for the eyepiece end. Autostar 2 instead of Autostar 497 - 140k GOTO objects (again mostly star catalogs but many more features thant he Autostar 497)

LX200 "Classic": (discontinued around 2000 or 2001 when the LX200GPS appeared)
Predecessor to the LX200GPS, this has a large hand controller that looks like the original cellular phone

with about 66k GOTO objects. These are older and can be had for less on the used market, but don't confuse the "Ultra High Contrast" label on the corrector plate ring with the more recent invention of "Ultra High Transmission Coatings (UHTC) that came out with the LX200 GPS. Some ebay sellers will happily advertise them as one and the same.

LX200 ACF:
Same exactly, as the LX200 GPS only with the ACF (Advanced Coma Free) optics instead of the venerable SCT.

LX90GPS:LX90ACF :: LX200GPS:LX200ACF

LX400 ACF:

Born as the RCX400 this was the first all new optics design to appear in a while, Meade called it an "Advanced Ritchey Cretien" since it was meant to have the flat coma free field of a very expensive Ritchey Cretien telescope, but "Advanced" in that it has less astigmatism. For reasons discussed ad nauseum elsewhere (don't turn this into another you know what thread please....), this new design is now called "Advanced Coma Free". In addition to all the features of the f10 LX200ACF, the LX400ACF is native f8, another first in the mass produced catadioptric world (f10 being the norm, Meade made some LX200 classics and prior to that LX6's at f6.3 but these were not as popular). The LX400 has a carbon fiber tube (another first for meade after celestron had been offering this for a while) and a fixed primary. The autostar2 controls focusing by moving the enitre corrector plate. A really neat feature is electronic collimation by tilting the secondary mirror/corrector assembly, a feature not before seen except on observatory class instruments.

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Meade RCX400 12" --