Oh boy, where do I start with this one... I bought this telescope back in July 2020, so I've had it a while now. It arrived quickly and well packaged. I opted for the 'Es Reid' scope check, just to make sure I didn't get a lemon (ha HA, read on!)

The telescope looks and feels great. The weight might surprise you, this 'little' thing is heavy!

The focuser is solid with no play. BUT, I had a lot of trouble attaching my ZWO AF to it. The only hole you can use to fasten down the bracket with, is the focuser lock screw hole! Come on, this is an imaging scope!

The whole 'Captain's wheel' thing to rotate the focuser is just stupid. What's wrong with a single screw?

Ah the tripod foot... Whoever decided that this was a good idea, should be fired! Good luck balancing the telescope! You can add a longer dovetail bar (Get a Losmandy!), or let me rephrase that; you will NEED a longer dovetail bar, but then the whole thing just becomes awkward to use (top heavy). Now, you can remove it, but you have to open up the tube. Not everyone will be willing to do that with a pricy telescope. But do attach tube rings, it will improve the handling a lot.

Now we come to why this is on my 'Worst telescope' list... and it's the optics! You would think you would get pin point stars in a refractor right, especially in a triplet APO! Nope! The flaring was so bad, I could hardly focus! Obviously, there had to be something wrong with the optics! Luckily I had the 'Es Reid' insurance, so back to FLO it went. A week later it came back with an 'All is good now! note. No it was not. In fact, nothing had changed! The stars were still bad! By now, the astro community had noticed that Sky-Watcher had optical problems with the Esprit 80. One of the biggest culprits was the lens spacer. There is a tiny gap in it, which would flare the stars. So knowing this, back the FLO it went again, this time for a spacer replacement. A week later it came back...with the same spacer!

So now I've given up, and copied what others have done. I bought a 78x2mm rubber O-ring to block the spacer gap. After installing this, the stars improved dramatically! But there is still some flaring left behind. It's too late to return it to FLO, and I can never sell it without taking a big hit. I have just accepted that the stars are what they are.

I don't recommend the Esprit 80 ED, especially at this price!

I bought this after a couple months of research for a triplet refractor.
Buying process was smooth, and the item arrived well packaged.

The build quality itself is pretty good, with a nice finish on the various parts. The focuser seems pretty solid also. However, I wouldn’t recommend this scope.

Mine has pretty bad color fringing around bright stars, possibly from a deformed or mid-aligned component in the lens cell. It is really quite obvious to me, and unacceptable on a scope of this price.

Secondly, there is basically zero chance of balancing this if you plan on using it for imaging, which would be the first and possibly only reason one would consider this scope. The decision to put such a small mounting foot on what’s supposed to be a fairly high end scope is just baffling. I’d read about this before buying, however didn’t think it would be a big issue.

I’ve mounted my copy of this scope on a Losmandy plate, adding to the price of the scope. changing to tube rings is not a trivial task, either.

Again, whilst I know that this is a highly praised scope generally, I don’t recommend it.

I recently upgraded to the Esprit 80 (from a very competent 130PDS).

The weight, glass configuration, wide FOV and F/5 makes this a perfect imaging scope for me.

I took the option to have the scope Es Reid bench tested prior to despatch and it was declared 'Excellent' (first light with the scope very much confirmed this with pin point stars across the field).

The scope came very well packaged in its very sturdy aluminium case.

The scope itself is very well finished and screams quality. The focuser holds the matched field flattener, ZWO EFW, spacers and ASI1600 without issue and during a 40 min image run there was zero movement.

Having a foot rather than tube rings is a curious decision by Sky-watcher as it's clearly designed for imaging but this is an extremely minor quibble and the Esprit is easily mounted onto a vixen dovetail. I had tried mounting it on an existing Sky-watcher dovetail but this didn't work so FLO recommended a suitable alternative (the ADM Vixen-type Universal Dovetail bars fit the Esprit shoe perfectly).

The service received from FLO throughout the transaction was excellent, as usual.

I purchased the scope mainly to use combined with the Quark Chromosphere solar Filter.
I experienced my first light during the March 2015 solar eclipse and I was totally blown away by the views of both the prominences and surface detail that can be seen.
I have also used the scope to view the stars and Lunar surface, the sharpness of the detail seen and the wide-field views of the stars are nothing short of fantastic.
The scope itself is extremely well built and has a top class finish. I am sure I will be using this scope for many years to come.