Hioptic 6" Maksutov Cassegrain NMC1900x152 Telescope Review

HiOptic 152 > Purchace & Delivery

PURCHASE & DELIVERY


PRICE AND WHERE TO BUY

The scope was bought on Ebay from the seller Auto_Surplus for a reasonable price (in the UK at least) of £235 ($470) including delivery and taxes. This is a UK trader rather than private seller and they offer world wide delivery so if you want one of these scopes they probably still sell them. If trans-atlantic shipping is expensive an alternative for USA shoppers could be the Astrozaop Maksutov which seems very similar.

 The original advert can be seen here. The item was described as "new", but as will be shown shortly, "refurbished" would have been a better description perhaps.

The seller seems to load up the postage price, £45/$90? Parcels2Go (DHL) could ship a box this size for about £10/$20! Part of this may be to cover PayPal fees, and to be fair to the seller, they do offer a £10/$20 shipping discount if you pay by an alternative method.

OPENING THE BOX

The package arrived within a couple of working days from purchase in a single large brown box. From the exterior it looked very worn. There were multiple layers of packing tape, a worrying sign of a returned product, and several holes, showing the box had had a rough life.

MC1900x152 External Box

Inside this box was another large plain white box that looked to be in perfect condition. There were no images of the product on the box so this isn't designed to be displayed in a shop window.

Inside the large white box all the items were separately packaged in individual white boxes but strangely they showed signs of damage. It looked like everything in this package may have been scavenged from working parts that made other scopes that had died in the post. The OTA came sandwiched between two foam blocks and the rest were in bubble wrap or plastic bags.

hioptic mc1900x152 internal boxes


WHAT YOU GET

Everything was removed and checked for damage. No damage was found but several parts showed signs of use because they looked dirty.

The box contained:
  • NMC 1900x1500 Telescope OTA (with dovetail pre-fitted).
  • 8x50 finder scope (very dirty)
  • finder scope mount
  • 6.4mm and 20mm Plossl eyepieces (dirty)
  • 1.25" diagonal (dirty)
  • 2" to 1.25" step-down
  • EQ3 Mount
  • Bendy knobs for mount.
  • AT3 tripod legs (scratched)
  • Tripod accessories tray & screws
What we have here seems to be a hybrid between parts that make up the NMC1900x152EQ8/AT6 and the MC1900x150EQ3/AT3. with the following accessories missing:
  • Moon filter
  • Sun filter
  • Cleaning cloth
  • Instructions

SUMMARY

It was a bit disappointingly to find the scope wasn't "brand spanking new" but everything advertised was included, and working, if only needing a little bit of cleaning.