I used to own one of these mounts years ago and I deemed it as a quite a reasonable mount. I always use to say you get what you pay for! It was a reasonable priced mount and gave reasonable performance. However, this recent one purchased from first light optics I would deem as almost rubbish. My biggest gripe are the worm gears on each drive - utter rubbish. I have tried regreasing and adjusting the drives and I can have the drives either very loose with LOTS of play, or the opposite VERY tight so that they hardly move! But nothing in between! It's nice to know that skywatcher have absolutely no quality control.

A good scope and, unlike its bigger brothers, doesn't require power to run. This is rather useful as a second scope mount. It will, just about, manage 120mm refractors, 150mm Maks or Newtonians, though the refractor would be the limit you'd want to use.

The biggest single problem (which may now be sorted out by the removal of old stock) is if you buy the polarscope.

The one I got was for a very old version of the EQ3-2, where you replaced the entire central mechanism for the polarscope and replace it wholesale with the given item.

The picture for the polarscope still shows the same attached setting circle and (thicker than will fit in the hole provided) scope shaft.

Worse, the instructions are old and talk about fitting the polarscope as if there were no calibration circle (the silvery collar bit) on the telescope.

Me? I tried to remove the fitting from the telescope. This was a bad idea.

Instead take the central parts of the polarscope out from the surround and it then fits in the hole provided in the telescope mount.

Hopefully they have updated the instructions at least.

If not, google for someone's instructions on the internet before trying.

Is my first mount and overall it does a pretty good job on keeping my skywatcher 127 mak steady. Main Issues are setting circles which don't lock in when tightened so can't really be used properly plus some stiffness in the slow motion controls or seems to even jam. Some errors in the instructional diagrams about setting circles.

The mount is easy to set up and once polar aligned keeps track of objects well. It's also solidly built and the vibration levels are reasonable.

However, the slow motion controls can be quite stiff at times, even jamming completely occasionally. It is also worth pointing out that that the setting circles are pretty useless, but they do look quite nice on the mount.

The altitude adjustment bolts on my mount have also bent, which makes it tricky to get a good polar alignment.

It is reasonable for the price, but the bendy bolts and stiffness let it down.