Not bad but...

I am going to assume that the reader already knows about the SkyScout from the other reviews and the marketing literature. I won't repeat those here but will make a couple of comments on what is not immediately known.

Construction: First I did not think it was "cheaply" made like some have said. This was a concern for me because I am good at breaking things. The black part of the SkyScout had been rubberized and it doesn't have a cheap feel for it.

Accessories: The SkyScout comes with a carrying case with a side zipper. It also has software for updating the firmware (highly recommended) and a set of earphones for the audio piece. The bag seems to be a nice addition.

GPS: The GPS receiver takes about 2-3 minutes to start. This is common. However most GPS receivers have a warm start where the time it takes to get a lock is reduced. This is not the case for the SkyScout.

Performance: Ok here is where things are both good and bad. I found the SkyScout to "generally" be right on. However I found that it can sometimes be "wrong" when identifying a star. For example when I asked it to locate Spica in Virgo it took me to the left of the star where it was almost out of the viewscope. I also found the same issue with Pollux and sadly enough when I asked it to identify Castor (in Gemini) it said it was Pollux. However many other stars it did not have this problem with.

One other issue I had was that at one point... the SkyScout went rather NUTS and started to tell me that I was looking at Orion when in reality I was looking at Leo. It seemed to think that we were in the dead of winter instead of late May. It only happened once and it fixed itself after I rebooted it.

Besides these issues it does work rather well so far.

Batteries: Everyone complains about the batteries. I have a very large set of rechargable batteries that are 2560 mAh rated. I was able to go beyond two hours with still half a charge left so I must be doing something right (I also turned down the brightness a bit that may have helped).

Additional info: There are some neat things that were not really mentioned in the marketing stuff. You can use this for tracing out constellations and the display will actually show what the constellation looks like and what the name of the brightest star is. This alone is a pretty nice feature because you can look at a star, read what constellation it is in, and then look at the pic of the constellation. Then you can look up and see what the constellation looks like.

One thing I think that people need to remember is that this is NOT a scope. The viewfinder you use has no magnification whatsoever (and actually things look a little smaller when looking through it). This means that you won't see many things that it mentions in normal sky conditions (you need dark skies or scope/binoculars).

It is however a pretty effective "planetarium" and I have to admit I had fun using it. It went well with my old Meade "Classic" LX200. However if you have a new LX200 Meade has a product similar to this that allows you to control the scope as well.