Telescope Comparison
Askar 103APO vs Sky-Watcher Evostar 80ED + HEQ5 Pro
The Sky-Watcher Evostar 80ED + HEQ5 Pro is a complete setup. The Askar 103APO needs a mount before it's usable.
First light
Askar · 103mm · £1,199
The custom-rig optical tube
- 103mm refractor — optical tube only, no mount included
- 700mm focal length at f/6.8
- Requires a compatible mount before you can observe anything
- Best for: observers who already own a suitable mount or are building a specific imaging rig
- Not a complete purchase — budget at least £100–300 extra for a mount before observing
Sky-Watcher · 80mm · £690
The automated deep-sky platform
- 80mm refractor on a computerised mount with motorised tracking
- Good for: Moon, planets, bright nebulae, star clusters, and deep-sky objects
- GoTo system finds any object in its database after initial star alignment — no star atlas needed
- Tracking motors keep objects centred as Earth rotates — useful above 100×, essential for photography
- 22.5kg total — requires a fixed garden spot or car transport
The full picture
The numbers that separate these two scopes — and what they mean at the eyepiece.
Aperture
Askar 103APO gathers 1.7× more light. On bright targets — Moon, Saturn, Jupiter — you won't notice. On fainter targets — dim galaxies, faint globular clusters — the gap is real.
Focal length
Askar 103APO's longer focal length reaches higher magnification with the same eyepiece — better reach for planetary detail. Sky-Watcher Evostar 80ED + HEQ5 Pro's shorter focal length gives a wider true field — better for large open clusters and extended nebulae.
Focal ratio
Askar 103APO's faster f/6.8 delivers wider fields with any eyepiece — better for open clusters and large nebulae. Sky-Watcher Evostar 80ED + HEQ5 Pro's f/7.5 provides more magnification per eyepiece — better for fine planetary detail.
Mount type
Askar 103APO has no mount — add a compatible mount before you can observe. Sky-Watcher Evostar 80ED + HEQ5 Pro is a complete ready-to-use system.
Weight (OTA)
Sky-Watcher Evostar 80ED + HEQ5 Pro's optical tube is 1.6kg lighter. Relevant if you plan to use it on multiple mounts or carry the tube to dark-sky sites separately.
Optical design
Both are refractors — no mirrors to collimate, good contrast, colour-free stars with ED or APO glass. The differences between them are in aperture, focal ratio, and glass quality.
At the eyepiece
| Target | Askar 103APO | Sky-Watcher Evostar 80ED + HEQ5 Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Planets | ||
| Moon | Excellent 103mm aperture delivers sharp crater detail and clean terminator views; the ED triplet produces essentially no chromatic fringing on the bright limb | Good 80mm aperture delivers sharp, colour-free craters and terminator detail; f/7.5 limits extreme magnification compared to longer focal length scopes |
| Saturn | Good Rings clearly defined, Cassini Division visible in steady seeing; 700mm focal length supports useful magnification but aperture limits fine banding detail | Moderate Rings clearly visible and disc shows colour, but 600mm focal length keeps the image small — Cassini Division requires excellent seeing and high-power eyepieces |
| Jupiter | Good Two main equatorial belts and GRS visible; 103mm resolves some secondary belts in good seeing but can't match larger apertures for fine atmospheric detail | Moderate Main equatorial belts visible; 80mm aperture and 600mm focal length limit detail on the Great Red Spot and festoons |
| Mars | Moderate Small disc visible with polar cap detectable near opposition; 103mm and 700mm focal length limit the detail available on this demanding target | Challenging Small orange disc visible at opposition; polar cap glimpsable in ideal conditions but surface albedo features are beyond this aperture |
Deep sky | ||
| Orion Nebula (M42) | Excellent 103mm gathers plenty of light and 700mm focal length frames the full nebula complex well; Trapezium resolved and nebulosity extends visually | Excellent Wide 600mm field frames the full nebula and Running Man beautifully — bright enough to show structure visually and a superb imaging target |
| Andromeda Galaxy (M31) | Excellent 700mm focal length keeps the full extent of M31 in the field; 103mm aperture shows the bright core and hints of dust lanes | Excellent 600mm focal length captures the full galaxy extent including companion galaxies; one of this scope's signature imaging targets |
| Open clusters | Excellent 700mm focal length and wide true field frame showpiece clusters like the Double Cluster and Pleiades beautifully | Excellent Wide field perfectly frames the Double Cluster, Pleiades, and other large clusters with pin-sharp stars across the field |
| Globular clusters | Moderate 103mm shows a granular, textured ball but cannot resolve individual stars in the core; M13 and M3 appear mottled at best | Challenging 80mm aperture cannot resolve individual stars — M13 and M3 appear as fuzzy, unresolved glows |
| Faint galaxies | Moderate 103mm aperture detects brighter Messier galaxies as smudges but struggles with fainter NGC targets visually | Moderate Visually limited by 80mm aperture; however, with camera and stacked exposures, many faint galaxies are accessible photographically |
| Milky Way / wide field | Good 700mm is slightly long for sweeping starfield views but still delivers rich fields; a reducer brings it closer to wide-field territory | Good 600mm focal length is at the long end for sweeping Milky Way fields visually, but on camera the wide field and fast optics capture rich starfields well |
Other | ||
| Double stars | Good 103mm resolves doubles to about 1.1 arcsecond; f/6.8 is not ideal for high-magnification splitting but the clean optics help | Good Clean ED optics split well-separated doubles cleanly; Dawes limit at 80mm is ~1.45 arcsec, so tight pairs are out of reach |
| Astrophotography (deep sky) | Not recommended No mount or tracking included; with a suitable equatorial mount this scope would rate Excellent — f/6.8, 103mm aperture, and ED triplet design are ideal for deep-sky imaging | Excellent HEQ5 Pro GoTo mount with tracking, 80mm ED optics at f/7.5 (f/6.3 with reducer), and massive payload headroom make this a benchmark widefield imaging rig |
| Astrophotography (planetary) | Moderate 103mm aperture captures reasonable planetary detail with a high-speed camera, but aperture and focal length limit resolution compared to larger scopes | Challenging 80mm aperture and 600mm focal length produce a small planetary disc — limited detail even with lucky imaging techniques |
| Emission nebulae (imaging) | Excellent 700mm at f/6.8 frames large emission nebulae like the Heart, Soul, and North America Nebula well on APS-C sensors; tight star correction across the field with a matched flattener | Not applicable |
| Galaxy groups (imaging) | Good 700mm focal length provides enough scale for galaxy groups like the Leo Triplet or M81/M82 on common sensor sizes while keeping good signal-to-noise at f/6.8 | Not applicable |
The real tradeoff
Both scopes are capable. The question is which one fits the way you actually observe.
Askar 103APO
- You're buying a premium optical tube and nothing else — before your first exposure, you'll need to source a mount, guide scope, field flattener, camera, and all the cabling, which means your total outlay will comfortably exceed £3000.
- You'll be rewarded with noticeably tighter, more colour-free stars than the 80ED delivers, because the ED triplet design suppresses chromatic aberration more aggressively than a doublet — and at 700mm focal length, you'll resolve more structure in medium-sized galaxies like M81/M82 that the 80ED renders as softer blobs.
- You'll spend your evenings framing targets that sit in a sweet spot between widefield and narrowfield — the Veil Nebula complex fills the frame beautifully, the Leo Triplet fits neatly on an APS-C chip — but you'll need longer exposures than a faster f/5 astrograph to pull faint signal, and every component choice is on you.
Sky-Watcher Evostar 80ED + HEQ5 Pro
- You'll unbox a matched OTA-and-mount package for £899 — less than the Askar tube alone — and after polar alignment you'll have GoTo pointing and motorised tracking ready to go, which means your first guided sub-exposures can happen weeks sooner than if you were assembling a rig around the 103APO.
- You'll frame enormous swathes of sky at 600mm — the full Andromeda Galaxy with room to spare, the Heart and Soul Nebulae side by side — but you'll feel the 80mm aperture when you zoom into your data and find less fine detail in galaxies and smaller nebulae than the 103APO captures.
- You'll appreciate the massive payload headroom on the HEQ5 Pro — the 3.2 kg OTA leaves over 10 kg of capacity for guide scope, camera, filter wheel, and dew heaters — but you'll pay for that margin every session with the 10 kg mount head and tripod that rules out anything resembling grab-and-go.
The dark side
Every scope has a personality. Here’s where each one gets difficult.
Askar
Askar 103APO
The £1199 price buys you a tube and nothing more — no mount, no diagonal, no eyepieces — so your realistic all-in imaging cost starts north of £3000 once you add an HEQ5-class mount, guide system, flattener, and camera.
At f/6.8 the 103APO is moderately fast but significantly slower than dedicated f/5 astrographs, meaning you'll need longer total integration times to reach the same signal-to-noise on faint targets.
A matched field flattener or reducer is required to keep edge-of-field stars tight on larger sensors — without one, coma and field curvature will visibly degrade the corners of your frames.
Sky-Watcher
Sky-Watcher Evostar 80ED + HEQ5 Pro
The ED doublet — not a true triplet APO — leaves slight residual chromatic aberration on bright stars at high magnification, which is negligible in imaging but noticeable if you occasionally observe visually.
No field flattener is included in the bundle; without the separate 0.85× reducer/corrector, edge stars on camera sensors will show coma and field curvature that compromise your data.
The HEQ5 Pro weighs roughly 10 kg for the head and tripod combined, and it demands careful polar alignment every session — this is not a setup you'll casually haul into the garden for a quick look.
Which is right for you?
Two different buyers. Two different right answers.
The custom-rig optical tube
Askar · Askar 103APO
You've already shot deep-sky images through an 80mm-class refractor, you own or plan to buy a serious equatorial mount, and you're ready to invest in a premium optical tube that will be the centrepiece of a carefully assembled imaging rig. You want tighter stars, better colour correction, and enough focal length at 700mm to pull real structure out of galaxies and smaller nebulae — and you're comfortable spending well over £3000 total to get there. This is not for you if you need a ready-to-use package or if your budget stops at the OTA price.
The automated deep-sky platform
Sky-Watcher · Sky-Watcher Evostar 80ED + HEQ5 Pro
You're stepping into deep-sky astrophotography for the first time at an intermediate level and you want a proven, complete OTA-plus-mount package that gets you imaging without the research burden of matching separate components. You'll love the wide field for large nebulae and the HEQ5 Pro's generous payload margin that lets you grow into autoguiding and filter wheels. This isn't for you if you crave the tightest possible star shapes and finer deep-sky detail — the 80mm doublet simply can't match a 103mm triplet optically — or if lugging a 10 kg mount to your observing site sounds like a dealbreaker.
Our verdict
This comparison has a catch: the Askar 103APO is a bare optical tube. You cannot use it without a separate mount — which adds meaningful cost and complexity. The Sky-Watcher Evostar 80ED + HEQ5 Pro is a complete, ready-to-observe package.
For most buyers, the Sky-Watcher Evostar 80ED + HEQ5 Pro is the right choice — you can observe the same night it arrives. The Askar 103APO makes sense if you already own a compatible mount, or are deliberately building a specific imaging setup piece by piece. If I had to choose for a first telescope: the Sky-Watcher Evostar 80ED + HEQ5 Pro, without hesitation.
Askar 103APO
View Askar 103APO →Sky-Watcher Evostar 80ED + HEQ5 Pro
View Sky-Watcher Evostar 80ED + HEQ5 Pro →Deep field: Full specifications
Every data point, for those who want to go further.
Full specifications
Fields highlighted in blue or amber indicate the better value for that spec. Data is manufacturer-stated and may vary.
How much can it see?
| Spec | Askar 103APO | Sky-Watcher Evostar 80ED + HEQ5 Pro |
|---|---|---|
Apertureⓘ The most important spec — bigger = more light = better views | 103mm | 80mm |
Focal Length Longer = more magnification potential | 700mm | 600mm |
Focal Ratio Lower f-number = wider field of view; higher = more magnification per eyepiece | f/6.8 | f/7.5 |
Optical Design The type of optics — each design has different strengths | Refractor | Refractor |
Coatings Better coatings = more light transmission through the optics | Fully multi-coated ED triplet on all air-to-glass surfaces | Fully multi-coated ED glass, FMC on all air-to-glass surfaces |
How do you point it?
| Spec | Askar 103APO | Sky-Watcher Evostar 80ED + HEQ5 Pro |
|---|---|---|
Mount Type The mechanical system that holds and moves the telescope | None (OTA only) | GoTo (Computerised) |
GoToⓘ Computer-controlled pointing — finds any of thousands of objects automatically | ||
Trackingⓘ Motor keeps objects centred as the Earth rotates — essential for astrophotography |
The focuser
| Spec | Askar 103APO | Sky-Watcher Evostar 80ED + HEQ5 Pro |
|---|---|---|
Focuser Size 2" accepts wider eyepieces and gives better low-power views | 2" / 1.25" | 2" |
Focuser Type Rack-and-pinion is standard; Crayford and dual-speed are smoother | Dual-speed Crayford 2" (10:1 reduction) | Crayford dual-speed (with 1.25" adapter) |
Size & weight
| Spec | Askar 103APO | Sky-Watcher Evostar 80ED + HEQ5 Pro |
|---|---|---|
OTA Weightⓘ Optical tube only — useful for comparing mount load capacity | 3.8kg | 2.2kg |
Total Weight Full setup including mount — this is what you lug to the car | — | 22.5kg |
Tube Length | 550mm | 600mm |
Tube Material | Aluminium | Aluminium, white powder coat |
What's in the box?
| Spec | Askar 103APO | Sky-Watcher Evostar 80ED + HEQ5 Pro |
|---|---|---|
Eyepieces Included eyepieces — more is better, but quality matters more than quantity | — | 25mm Super eyepiece |
Finder Scope Helps you locate areas of the sky before switching to the main eyepiece | — | 8x50 right-angle correct-image finder with illuminated reticle |
Diagonal Tilts the eyepiece 90° for comfortable viewing — useful on refractors |
Blue highlight: Askar 103APO advantage · Amber highlight: Sky-Watcher Evostar 80ED + HEQ5 Pro advantage · Greyed cells: equal or subjective.