ActiveOutdoorsOutdoor TechZwo Seestar S50 review: affordable smart telescope for sky photography anywhereKeenly priced and easy to use, the Zwo’s Seestar S50 is a brilliant beginner option for budding astronomersWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.(Image credit: Jamie Carter)T3 VerdictThe Seestar S50 is an affordable smart telescope, operated solely via a smartphone app, that makes basic astrophotography simple and accessible. A 2-inch telescope with a Sony image sensor instead of an eyepiece, it creates HD-quality images of celestial objects, such as galaxies and nebula, but also of the sun and moon. Despite its low-resolution images and short battery life, it offers great value for its price.Reasons to buy+Intuitive app+Simple to set up+Portable and easy to store+Effective electronic autofocusReasons to avoid-No eyepiece-Tripod required-Low-resolution images-Short battery lifeWhy you can trust T3Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you.Find out more about how we test.
ActiveOutdoorsOutdoor TechZwo Seestar S50 review: affordable smart telescope for sky photography anywhereKeenly priced and easy to use, the Zwo’s Seestar S50 is a brilliant beginner option for budding astronomersWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.(Image credit: Jamie Carter)T3 VerdictThe Seestar S50 is an affordable smart telescope, operated solely via a smartphone app, that makes basic astrophotography simple and accessible. A 2-inch telescope with a Sony image sensor instead of an eyepiece, it creates HD-quality images of celestial objects, such as galaxies and nebula, but also of the sun and moon. Despite its low-resolution images and short battery life, it offers great value for its price.Reasons to buy+Intuitive app+Simple to set up+Portable and easy to store+Effective electronic autofocusReasons to avoid-No eyepiece-Tripod required-Low-resolution images-Short battery lifeWhy you can trust T3Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you.Find out more about how we test.
Keenly priced and easy to use, the Zwo’s Seestar S50 is a brilliant beginner option for budding astronomers
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
(Image credit: Jamie Carter)T3 VerdictThe Seestar S50 is an affordable smart telescope, operated solely via a smartphone app, that makes basic astrophotography simple and accessible. A 2-inch telescope with a Sony image sensor instead of an eyepiece, it creates HD-quality images of celestial objects, such as galaxies and nebula, but also of the sun and moon. Despite its low-resolution images and short battery life, it offers great value for its price.Reasons to buy+Intuitive app+Simple to set up+Portable and easy to store+Effective electronic autofocusReasons to avoid-No eyepiece-Tripod required-Low-resolution images-Short battery life
(Image credit: Jamie Carter)
(Image credit: Jamie Carter)
T3 VerdictThe Seestar S50 is an affordable smart telescope, operated solely via a smartphone app, that makes basic astrophotography simple and accessible. A 2-inch telescope with a Sony image sensor instead of an eyepiece, it creates HD-quality images of celestial objects, such as galaxies and nebula, but also of the sun and moon. Despite its low-resolution images and short battery life, it offers great value for its price.Reasons to buy+Intuitive app+Simple to set up+Portable and easy to store+Effective electronic autofocusReasons to avoid-No eyepiece-Tripod required-Low-resolution images-Short battery life
T3 VerdictThe Seestar S50 is an affordable smart telescope, operated solely via a smartphone app, that makes basic astrophotography simple and accessible. A 2-inch telescope with a Sony image sensor instead of an eyepiece, it creates HD-quality images of celestial objects, such as galaxies and nebula, but also of the sun and moon. Despite its low-resolution images and short battery life, it offers great value for its price.
T3 Verdict
The Seestar S50 is an affordable smart telescope, operated solely via a smartphone app, that makes basic astrophotography simple and accessible. A 2-inch telescope with a Sony image sensor instead of an eyepiece, it creates HD-quality images of celestial objects, such as galaxies and nebula, but also of the sun and moon. Despite its low-resolution images and short battery life, it offers great value for its price.
Reasons to buy+Intuitive app+Simple to set up+Portable and easy to store+Effective electronic autofocusReasons to avoid-No eyepiece-Tripod required-Low-resolution images-Short battery life
Reasons to buy+Intuitive app+Simple to set up+Portable and easy to store+Effective electronic autofocus
Intuitive app
Simple to set up
Portable and easy to store
Effective electronic autofocus
Reasons to avoid-No eyepiece-Tripod required-Low-resolution images-Short battery life
No eyepiece
Tripod required
Low-resolution images
Short battery life
Why you can trust T3Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you.Find out more about how we test.
Why you can trust T3Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you.Find out more about how we test.
Jump to category:Price and availabilitySpecificationsFeatures and what’s newSetup and ease of useVerdictAlso consider
Jump to category:Price and availabilitySpecificationsFeatures and what’s newSetup and ease of useVerdictAlso consider
Seestar S50 deals
8 Amazon customer reviews☆☆☆☆☆
8 Amazon customer reviews☆☆☆☆☆
☆☆☆☆☆
$499View$525View
$499View
$499View
$499View
$499
$499
$525View
$525View
$525View
$525
$525
We check over 250 million products every day for the best prices
The Seestar S50 smart telescope — operated entirely via a smartphone app and without an eyepiece — makes astrophotography accessible to everyone under the sun (and moon).
The smallest and most affordable smart telescope on sale, the Seestar S50 is no bigger than a coffee machine yet packs a punch when it comes to deep-sky and solar system astronomy. It lacks the fancy optics and sleek metal casings of thebest telescopes(the smart variety, anyway) from the likes of Unistellar, but the Seestar S50 is all about incredible value.
Is this the smart telescope for you? That will depend on your expectations and interest in astronomy, but this is a popular product for a reason. The most affordable product of its kind, the Seestar S50 is also the flag-bearer for the brave new world of smart telescopes.
ZWO Seestar S50 review
Price and availability
(Image credit: Jamie Carter)
(Image credit: Jamie Carter)
For context, that’s less than a quarter of the price of the larger, more luxurious high-end smart telescopes such as theUnistellar Odyssey ProandUnistellar eVscope 2. It appears to be priced to compete withVaonis Vespera 2, a smart telescope with similar-sized optics that sells for $1,590 / £1,370 / AU$749.
The box includes a carbon fiber tripod, a USB-C cable, a solar filter and a rudimentary hard carry case that offers total protection.
Accessories include a tripod-level adjuster that does away with the need for fiddling with tripod legs to get the product perfectly balanced. It costs $39.95 / £29.00 / AU$60.
Specifications
(Image credit: Jamie Carter)
(Image credit: Jamie Carter)
Features and what’s new
(Image credit: Jamie Carter)
(Image credit: Jamie Carter)
Ultra-portable and lightweight, the Seestar S50 weighs just 5.5 lbs/2.5kg — less than three pineapples — and that’s a big chunk of its appeal. It easily fits into a vehicle and even into a modest camera bag, making it an accessory that’s easy to travel. At home, it easily sits on a bookshelf when not in use.
At its core, the Seestar S50 is a modest refractor telescope with a teardrop-shaped plastic chassis. There’s no lens cap, but to protect it, the motorized arm parks itself while pointing downwards when the telescope is not in use, completely shielding it. It also has rubber pads on its underside to keep it from slipping on shiny surfaces. However, this is a lightweight product that lacks the high-end construction of its rivals.
For a smart telescope, it’s what’s inside that counts. A critical component of any such product is its image sensor. Inside the Seestar S50 is a 1/2.8-inch Sony IMX462, which, unlike its rivals, is both rather low resolution (it’s around two megapixels, so basic HD quality) and rectangular in shape.
Elsewhere, it’s equipped with an onboard computer, a 64GB hard disk, and a built-in 6,000 mAh lithium-ion rechargeable battery that recharges via USB-C (Seestar S50 offers about for-to-six hours of use). Since there’s no optical eyepiece, when the battery runs out, it’s completely useless. It’s got that in common with all smart telescopes.
It comes with a two-section carbon fiber tripod. It’s good quality but rather small. It uses a standard 3/8-inch tripod thread, so adding your own larger tripod is possible — and preferable if you want to image objects close to the horizon (such as a setting sun or rising moon).
Setup and ease of use
Image1of4(Image credit: Jamie Carter)(Image credit: Jamie Carter)(Image credit: Jamie Carter)(Image credit: Jamie Carter)
Image1of4(Image credit: Jamie Carter)(Image credit: Jamie Carter)(Image credit: Jamie Carter)(Image credit: Jamie Carter)
Image1of4
(Image credit: Jamie Carter)(Image credit: Jamie Carter)(Image credit: Jamie Carter)(Image credit: Jamie Carter)
(Image credit: Jamie Carter)(Image credit: Jamie Carter)(Image credit: Jamie Carter)(Image credit: Jamie Carter)
(Image credit: Jamie Carter)
(Image credit: Jamie Carter)
(Image credit: Jamie Carter)
(Image credit: Jamie Carter)
(Image credit: Jamie Carter)
(Image credit: Jamie Carter)
(Image credit: Jamie Carter)
(Image credit: Jamie Carter)
(Image credit: Jamie Carter)
(Image credit: Jamie Carter)
(Image credit: Jamie Carter)
(Image credit: Jamie Carter)
(Image credit: Jamie Carter)
(Image credit: Jamie Carter)
(Image credit: Jamie Carter)
(Image credit: Jamie Carter)
(Image credit: Jamie Carter)
(Image credit: Jamie Carter)
(Image credit: Jamie Carter)
(Image credit: Jamie Carter)
While most apps for smart telescopes give the user lists of objects to slew to, the Seestar app provides all-sky planetarium software, so you can browse the virtual sky and select a target. Once chosen, the telescope slews to an object and begins taking 10-second exposures, which it stacks. It’s that automatic process that removes the effect of light pollution, but also helping in that aim is its narrowband dual-band filter. Bright objects, such as some galaxies, take just a few minutes of imaging to look impressive.
However, leave the product alone for an hour, and you’ll begin to see faint dust lanes in galaxies become visible. That’s also true of faint nebula, which can look like nothing at all after a few minutes, but pop with color and intricate detail after an hour. The beauty of all smart telescopes, including the Seestar S50, is that you can go inside and leave it to do its work. All you need is a clear sky. Images are stored in the Seestar app’s ‘My Album’ tab.
What the Seestar S50 delivers in excellent quality at all times are images of the moon and the sun. While the former is crystal clear, the latter — using the snap-on solar filter — is sharp enough to reveal detail within sunspots. That same can’t be said for planets, for which images are blurry and uninspiring.
The Seestar S50 does have limitations — including its two-megapixel resolution, its portrait-shaped images and planetary captures — but if you’re after an easy-to-use smart telescope for general use, it’s hard to beat.
Verdict
(Image credit: Jamie Carter)
(Image credit: Jamie Carter)
With affordability and ease of use at its core, the Seestar S50 smart telescope is a great entry-level option for anyone wanting to get into astronomy and astrophotography. It’s particularly beneficial for those living in light-polluted urban areas.
Despite its technical limitations – such as its relatively low-resolution images compared to other smart telescopes – it compensates with its compact and portable design, intuitive app and, of course, its low price.
It’s able to capture images of deep-sky objects within minutes of setup and offers impressive solar and lunar images. The Seestar S50 is an impressive entry-level product that will introduce you to the world of smart telescopes – and it may be the only one you ever need.
Also consider
The Seestar S50 is the most affordable smart telescope around, but it’s not the best. In fact, all the other models available – the chief brands being Unistellar and Vaonis – boast superior build quality and lots of extra features.
For example, the similarly specifiedVanois Vespera 2offers a better app and the chance to take multiple images of the night sky that it automatically stitches together. That’s useful for taking panoramas and images of large objects, such as the Andromeda Galaxy. It also produces 6.2-megapixel images.
An expensive step-up option would be theUnistellar Odyssey Pro, a 3.4-inch/85 mm reflector telescope that’s physically a little larger but takes 4.1-megapixel images. It adds a Nikon OLED eyepiece and offers the chance to get involved in citizen science campaigns to find exoplanets and image-passing comets.
Seestar S50: Price Comparison
8 Amazon customer reviews☆☆☆☆☆
8 Amazon customer reviews☆☆☆☆☆
☆☆☆☆☆
$499View$525View
$499View
$499View
$499View
$499
$499
$525View
$525View
$525View
$525
$525
We check over 250 million products every day for the best prices
Sign up to the T3 newsletter for smarter living straight to your inbox
Get all the latest news, reviews, deals and buying guides on gorgeous tech, home and active products from the T3 experts
Netflix is making a huge surprise change for hit spy show’s new seasonThe Recruit is taking a global trip this time out
The Recruit is taking a global trip this time out
This case turns your iPhone or Android phone into an e-reader, but there’s a catchActually, there are a couple…
Actually, there are a couple…
Traeger’s new Woodridge pellet barbecues have got me excited for grilling seasonTraeger debuts three new wood pellet grills
Traeger debuts three new wood pellet grills
