Any Feedback on Skywatcher 150i Harmonic mount?

[glend (Glen)]

I watched a short video from some guy talking on behalf of Skywatcher, about the 150i Wave Harmonic drive. I see Bintel has them listed, and they seem pretty pricey for the weight carrying capacity, compared to belt drive type mounts. Or maybe its just been a long time since I bought my belt drive CGX, and mounts cost more now.

Has anyone bought one of these Skywatcher harmonic mounts? It would be good to see how it compares to a good belt drive mount. Is it really that much better? Opinions?

https://youtu.be/N4yaYqpFIAA?si=GRMLhwy6-d8AOIET

[toc (Tim)]

Trevor from Astro backyard did a pretty good review of the 150:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4yaYqpFIAA

My view of the Strainwave mounts are that they are not necessarily
better performers than traditional mounts, but they look to be (I dont own one btw) much much smaller and easier to manage. They do still have their downsides, such as having to use pretty short guiding exposure times.

If I was looking to go more mobile, I would definitely pick one up, but I get slightly better performance with my Ioptron CEM70 and I never move my gear, so I dont feel the urge.

[Nikolas (Nik)]

Yes they are Very expensive. more than the zwo version which is very expensive. Where is the competition?

[toc (Tim)]

Originally Posted by Nikolas

Yes they are Very expensive. more than the zwo version which is very expensive. Where is the competition?

There are quite a lot of these sort of mounts about now from Ioptron, Warpastron, Pegasas astro, Sharpstar, Juwei, proxisky, Taobao etc..

Other than the iOptron, i think they use 'onstep' as the controller and perform very similarly, and are pretty similar in price.

I think the Juwei is the cheapest, but I wouldnt be buying a mount unless it was backed up by a local dealer (i.e Sidereal, Testar)