Smart Telescopes in Practice. Reviews, Hands-On Experience, and Comparisons of Seestar, DWARFLAB, Celestron, and More.

Smart telescopes in practical testing. Reviews, hands-on experience, and comparisons of Seestar, DWARFLAB, Celestron, and more. As part of a Projektes I test different smart telescopes and try to assess their performance. Step by step, this is becoming a review and testing portal. The idea is not to post pretty pictures—the smart telescopes can do that well enough on their own—but to highlight technical features that I believe make the difference...

Part of NGC 7000, the bright rim, with the DWARF Mini (unprocessed)

To get started in the world of smart telescopes, we especially recommend a device that’s easy to use and quickly leads to your first sense of accomplishment. The good news is that, basically, all devices can do that, whether DWARF, Seestar, Celestron, and so on. Automatic alignment, an intuitive app, and straightforward imaging of celestial objects remove many of the technical hurdles for beginners. For advanced users, the downloaded FITS files open up many interesting possibilities that go beyond astrophotography.

NGC 6960 (Witch’s Broom) with the S30 Pro before and after gradient processing

A Brief Comparison: How Do the Seestar S30 Pro and S50 Pro Differ? Besides the price, the S30 Pro natively produces a larger field of view. Based on the published data (August 2026), I would consider the S50 Pro the more capable system for deep-sky astrophotography, primarily because of its larger aperture, the resulting greater light-gathering capability, and finer sampling at 2.30″/pixel compared with 3.74″/pixel for the S30 Pro. In principle, this provides better conditions for finer detail reproduction, although this also depends on factors such as optics, tracking, and imaging conditions. Like the S30 Pro, the S50 Pro also features a dual-camera system. IMO, the S30 Pro is the simpler, wider-angle all-rounder and therefore natively a larger field of view. If the goal is the easiest possible entry and you are comparing only the two Seestar models, there is a lot to be said for the S30 Pro; anyone who wants to extract as much detail as possible from smaller and fainter deep-sky objects from the outset will probably be better served by the S50 Pro.

Here is an interesting comparison: Some time ago I captured NGC 4565 with the Seestar S50, and later with the S30 Pro.

The S50 should have a certain advantage, not only because of its 250 mm focal length, but also because of its 50 mm aperture compared with 30 mm. How can we assess the imaging capability of the two devices here?



With its 50 mm aperture compared with the 30 mm of the S30 Pro, the S50 has an aperture area that is 2.78 times larger. For a point source of light, such as a star, at the same exposure time it can in principle collect 2.78 times more photons. However, for an extended object such as NGC 4565, this aspect cannot be directly translated into signal per pixel, because the S50 has a 250 mm focal length compared with 160 mm. This makes the object appear about 1.56 times larger; the same area of sky is therefore spread over approximately 1.56^2 = 2.44 times as many pixels.

For extended objects, the relationship between aperture and focal length results in a signal advantage per pixel for the S50 of approximately (5.3/5.0)^2 = 1.12, or about 12%. For an extended object, the S50 therefore delivers only about 12% more light per pixel. The larger aperture of the S50 does result in somewhat more collected light, but for extended objects this advantage is largely offset by the longer focal length and therefore the larger image scale of the object. For the signal per pixel, aperture alone is therefore not decisive; what matters is the combination of aperture, focal length, and pixel size.

IC 1396 with the DWARF Mini, processed with Siril, operated for 1 hour in Alt-Az mode with the integrated dual-band filter.

Does the Seestar S30 Pro deliver better image quality than the DWARF Mini? Generally speaking, I wouldn't say so. The optical specifications are very similar. The Seestar S30 Pro uses the Sony IMX585, while the DWARF Mini uses the Sony IMX662; both sensors have a pixel size of 2.9 µm. As a result, the detail sampling is also nearly identical at 3.74″/pixel and 3.99″/pixel The main difference is sensor size: the Seestar S30 Pro has 3840 × 2160 pixels, while the DWARF Mini has 1920 × 1080 pixels. As a result, the Seestar S30 Pro captures a significantly larger portion of the sky and is particularly well suited to extended nebulae. The DWARF Mini provides a correspondingly smaller field of view because of its smaller sensor.