Is this a good deal

[Rocket Pooch]

Orion are selling the tube assemblies for their SkyWatcher 120mm Refractors for £169. Is this a good deal?  

Does anyone have experiance of these?

[Rick]

When they say "tube assemblies" does that mean the optics and so on are all put together, or is is a bag of bits?

There's probably quite a bit of collimation and so on needed to get a scope performaing at its best, and if the optics aren't good then....

[Rocket Pooch]

I had a chat with them and there brand new assembled (tube assembly, no finder etc) and ready to go.

[Rick]

So you'll need to fit a finder and get a mount and some eyepieces as well. Those could add up to a fair bit more.

[Rocket Pooch]

Yep, I was going to go out and buy a meade LXD55 for £1,079, apparently the mount is not up to too much so I was going to get a smaller scope, get a decent mount (approx £600+) for now then get a descent scope in the future to put on the mount.  

Or Get an 8" Meade LXD, to start with, get a good mount for the optics later and use the LXD Mount for a CCD wide field camera.

 Or stick with my ETX70 and save about £2,000.

Basically there's to many toys available to buy.

Advice form anyone would help, I like the ETX70 but its limited.  And I want MORE POWER!

[Rick]

For pure resolving power, a plain newtonian often offers the best aperture-per-buck....