iOptron 3200 SmartEQ Pro (White)

Where to begin. I paid for Saturday shipping as I had the weekend off and didn't get it until Monday. It states it comes with a padded hard case (last 4 words in the description) which it did not, I contacted Amazon and a customer representative argued with me but finally ended up making it right. The item itself is good quality, it's huge and heavy so it will never be an option to take on a hike or backpacking trip in fact it won't be going very far from the car since it would take multiple trips to get all my gear there. The polar scope says it comes perfectly focused by hand from the manufacturer and it was in no way shape or form focused I had to disassemble it and refocus the scope, also the light for the scope is not lighting up the crosshair compass inside of the scope instead its lighting up the sky making it very difficult to align properly. The directions that come with the mount are no where near complete so make sure you dload them from the Ioptron website. Once I did get it aligned it tracked and guided very well, the remote will tell you the position on the compass that Polaris needs to be in for alignment based on time and gps location, the goto feature is amazing and well worth the money, I was able to use about 6lbs of gear on it and track bodes galaxy at 600mm. I wouldn't recommend this for a complete noob like me, I did have to have help from a friend to figure everything out which was pretty frustrating. I did have to buy a vixen dovetail for the mount, along with a new bolt that tightens the dovetail to the mount because the bolt it came with has a knob on it that's too big to turn with the camera mounted.

When I bought the Smarteq pro I was a little skeptical that such an inexpensive mount could be used for astrophotography. I was quickly disproved the first night I tested it. I first used it with my Canon lens assembly which consists of a Vixan style male to male dovetail rail that supports the lens mount and a bracket for a Robofocus motor that controls the helical focus mechanism of the lens. The total weight of the rig with my Canon 200mm f2.8L and CCD was about 9lbs and the mount performed flawlessly. I was able to connect it to my laptop (requires additional cable) and control it with Sequence Generator pro for plate solving and high precision pointing. I also autoguided the mount with my SX Lodestar without any issues. I recently started using is it with my Takahashi FS-60Cb and QSI583Wsg combo and The mount keeps working well allowing me to acquire great data. Good job Ioptron. I have used it with lenses up to 300mm FL and it works great. I can't speak for longer focal lengths.

Do yourself a favor and stay far away. I wasted $500 on a glorified paperweight. 3 uses, 1st time out couldn’t find any objects. Even after alignment. Strike one. 2nd time out the DEC and RA kept slipping and screwing up the alignment. Strike two. Strike 3.... motor completely crapped out and wouldn’t budge. Done with this piece of crap and never going with an iOptron product again.

This did not come with a case as stated in the item description. The price is good, but this is a VERY basic mount. The counter balance weight was to large for my gear. Decent tripod after tightening it up a bit. Dont extend legs if taking pictures, only to level. The spotting scope is almost worthless as is, it needs modification to the light source and my chart was not positioned properly, i cant say much on tracking yet, still trying to get good polar alignment. The goto function seems to work well. 5min short focal length exposures are all i would expect from the mount without a guide camera. Worked with small adjustments for the solar eclipse and a 650mm lense. Batteries last for atleast a full night.

I felt like I need to write a review as some of them were not appreciating this mount. I needed a portable mount for my portable astrophotography setup (in the picture). The total payload is less than 12 lb (I know it is a little higher than the 11lb official payload), but on my 1st test, I was able to get Ha shot for 300 sec (5 minutes and attached). I really didn't expect to have its result, but this mount performed exactly as I expected.

I received it this morning and unpacked it. The packing was poor, it had been sealed with paper tape and it was partially opened. I took an inventory and all was there, but I was very lucky that some items had not fallen out. I planned to use this for grab and go astro-photography with a DSLR and wide lenses.After taking it out of the packing , I was very unimpressed with the overall fit. Just nothing fit together nicely, the battery doors were cheaply made and had very poor fit. Looked like they would be trouble in a short time. I put the tripod together and that was the last thing that I did. It is just bad. Too light and poorly made. It was much worse than my middle range Bogen photo tripod. It became obvious that this mount was not going to do the job that I intended for it..The leg joints flapped when extended. Still looking for a decent grab and go , but if this is iOptron quality, I don't want any more of it.

A great Go TO mount with easy setup and controls. Can easily carry my camera or small telescope. I just think its too expensive if it was a little cheaper I would give it 5 stars.

should say I was very happy but seller not give right answer to help me fix hand controller problem.. not saving setup and I just wanted to replace hand controller and he say… it’s very expensive!!! Very disappointed! I had to return it