It is my first owned Dob. So I can not compare it to other makes and models. It took me about 90 minutes to put it together. It moves around up and down very smoothly. The tube is big but very light made of aluminum. The mount is kinda on the heavy side. It is made of some kind of artificial wood, but hard and durable looking. However, I would not want this material to stay in contact with water for very long. The two inch focuser is made of plastic with some metal parts. It operates very smoothly/will not be upgrading.
I have not learned to collimate this scope. However, my first target was the Moon. The craters were very sharp at 300 magnification. Looks like it came close to good collimation. Being a Newtonian scope the sharpness surprised me. In a few days/weeks I will do a side by side shootout with my 1200mm F8 achromatic. My second target was Vega which showed four diffraction spikes and I could not bring it into sharp focus. Perhaps the collimation is a little off. I say a little off because the Moon observation was great. The third target was Alberio which could not be brought into focus. Below is an image of what I remember the star test looked liked. I also have an image from Ed Ting comparing brightness between a six inch and eight inch Newt.
This Dob is for easy put together/breakdown and galaxies/nebula at my dark site. This morning I put the beast/achromatic on a SkyView Pro EQ mount. It is permanently mounted topped with a heavy duty fountain cover. Will be using this scope at home for planets, Moon, and stars. I got this scope used for $250 US. It gets 300 mag on the Moon with a four inch aperture mask. I can not vouch for the new Celestron 1200 F8 achromatic, but the old glass is great. However, I had to replace it with the Dob. It is just a pain to break down after a long night and early morning of stargazing. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks to you all
Getting a clear x300 on the moon is good going, indeed. Your defocused/tube photo suggests your collimation is not quite spot on - see attached PDF. The green circle around your secondary mirror shadow should be concentric with the small internal red circle, which is concentric with the larger red circle around the image of your primary mirror.
