Visionking 70/700 Refractor Telescope

The Visionking 70/700 is a refractor with a 70 mm objective lens and a 700 mm focal length, which makes it an f/10 telescope - the long, slow tube that has been the standard beginner's refractor for decades. It arrives complete: an alt-azimuth mount on a full-height aluminium tripod, a 5x24 finder, a star diagonal and two eyepieces.

The long focal length is the point of it. At f/10 simple eyepieces perform better than they do in a short tube, the false colour that small refractors show around bright objects is less obvious, and the supplied eyepieces reach a magnification a 70 mm lens can actually carry. The Moon shows craters, mountain ranges and shadow detail along the terminator. Jupiter shows its four bright moons, and on a steady night its two main cloud belts. Saturn shows as a small disc with the rings clearly separated from the planet. What you give up is field of view and convenience: the tube is about 70 cm long, so this is a telescope you carry out and set up rather than one you slip into a bag.

Who it suits: beginners buying a first telescope, families and schools who want an instrument that stands on its own tripod at a sensible height, and anyone whose main interest is the Moon and the planets. It is not the right choice for faint deep-sky observing, for long-exposure astrophotography, or for a buyer who wants the widest possible star fields - a 70 mm at f/10 is a planetary tube, not a rich-field one.

About magnification, plainly. Magnification is not a fixed property of a telescope - it depends on which eyepiece you fit, and any telescope can be pushed to any number you like. What actually limits it is the aperture. With this telescope's 700 mm focal length, the 25 mm eyepiece gives 28x and the 10 mm gives 70x. Both sit comfortably within what a 70 mm lens can do, which is the real advantage of a long tube: you reach useful planetary magnification with ordinary eyepieces. The theoretical ceiling for 70 mm is around 140x in excellent conditions, and in ordinary city air anything much above 100x gives a dim, unsteady image. Figures such as 525x, printed on the boxes of telescopes this size, are well past the point where more magnification stops adding detail.

Setup is straightforward, with one step worth doing in daylight: align the 5x24 finder on a distant fixed object - a pole, a rooftop aerial - before your first night, or finding anything in the dark will be frustrating. After that, fit the diagonal and the 25 mm eyepiece, start on the Moon, and change to the 10 mm only once the target is centred and the air is steady. A refractor holds its optical alignment, so there is no routine collimation to learn.

This is an imported Visionking telescope, not one of our Made in Pakistan models. We stock imported telescopes where they fill a real gap, and here it is the classic long refractor at an entry-level price. If you want more light-gathering for the money and stronger deep-sky performance, compare it with our Made in Pakistan reflectors before deciding.