Telescope Comparison
Sky-Watcher Esprit 100ED vs Sky-Watcher Evostar 80ED + HEQ5 Pro
The Sky-Watcher Evostar 80ED + HEQ5 Pro is a complete setup. The Sky-Watcher Esprit 100ED needs a mount before it's usable.
First light
Sky-Watcher · 100mm · £1,099
The custom-rig optical tube
- 100mm refractor — optical tube only, no mount included
- 550mm focal length at f/5.5
- 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
Sky-Watcher Esprit 100ED gathers 1.6× 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
Sky-Watcher Evostar 80ED + HEQ5 Pro's longer focal length reaches higher magnification with the same eyepiece — better reach for planetary detail. Sky-Watcher Esprit 100ED's shorter focal length gives a wider true field — better for large open clusters and extended nebulae.
Focal ratio
Sky-Watcher Esprit 100ED's faster f/5.5 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
Sky-Watcher Esprit 100ED 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 1.7kg 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 | Sky-Watcher Esprit 100ED | Sky-Watcher Evostar 80ED + HEQ5 Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Planets | ||
| Moon | Excellent 100mm aperture delivers sharp crater detail and clean terminator views; the fast focal ratio means lower magnification per eyepiece but detail is still crisp | 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 separated, Cassini Division visible in good seeing; 550mm focal length limits image scale at the eyepiece | 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 cloud belts and GRS visible; 100mm aperture resolves belt detail but the short focal length caps useful magnification | Moderate Main equatorial belts visible; 80mm aperture and 600mm focal length limit detail on the Great Red Spot and festoons |
| Mars | Moderate Disc and polar cap visible at opposition; 100mm and 550mm focal length are limiting for surface albedo features | 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 100mm gathers ample light, 550mm frames the full nebula with surrounding nebulosity; f/5.5 rewards both visual and imaging use | 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 550mm captures the full extent of M31 including companion galaxies; 100mm aperture shows outer halo hints visually | Excellent 600mm focal length captures the full galaxy extent including companion galaxies; one of this scope's signature imaging targets |
| Open clusters | Excellent 550mm focal length provides generous framing — the Double Cluster, Pleiades, and similar targets are beautifully presented | Excellent Wide field perfectly frames the Double Cluster, Pleiades, and other large clusters with pin-sharp stars across the field |
| Globular clusters | Moderate M13 and M5 appear granular with hints of edge resolution; core remains unresolved at 100mm | Challenging 80mm aperture cannot resolve individual stars — M13 and M3 appear as fuzzy, unresolved glows |
| Faint galaxies | Moderate 100mm shows brighter Messier galaxies as fuzzy patches; NGC targets require dark skies and are at the limit visually | Moderate Visually limited by 80mm aperture; however, with camera and stacked exposures, many faint galaxies are accessible photographically |
| Milky Way / wide field | Good 550mm is slightly long for sweeping Milky Way panoramas but still delivers rich star fields; excellent for targeted regions like Cygnus | 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 100mm resolves down to about 1.2 arcsec; chromatic correction is excellent but the fast focal ratio makes splitting tight pairs trickier than in a long-focus refractor | 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 included — on a suitable equatorial GoTo mount this scope would rate Excellent (f/5.5, 100mm, flat field to full-frame), but as sold it cannot track | 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 100mm aperture is workable with a Barlow and planetary camera, but 550mm native focal length requires significant amplification; needs a tracking mount | Challenging 80mm aperture and 600mm focal length produce a small planetary disc — limited detail even with lucky imaging techniques |
| Emission nebulae (imaging) | Excellent Fast f/5.5 ratio and 550mm focal length are ideal for large emission targets like the Veil, Rosette, and Heart Nebulae on APS-C or full-frame sensors | Not applicable |
| Galaxy groups (imaging) | Good 550mm frames targets like the Leo Triplet and Markarian's Chain well on APS-C; 100mm gathers enough light for reasonable exposure times | Not applicable |
The real tradeoff
Both scopes are capable. The question is which one fits the way you actually observe.
Sky-Watcher Esprit 100ED
- You're buying the optics now and figuring out the rest later — no mount, no finder, no diagonal, no eyepieces — so your first imaging session is still £1,400–£2,000 of mount shopping away, and that's before the camera and guide scope.
- You'll reward yourself with pinpoint stars across a full-frame sensor straight out of the focuser, because the integrated field flattener eliminates the back-focus guesswork that plagues other fast refractors — as long as you nail exactly 55mm of spacing, which you'll measure with calipers more than once.
- You'll feel the extra 20mm of aperture and the faster f/5.5 ratio in your sub-exposures: shorter integration times to reach the same signal-to-noise, and noticeably more detail in galaxy arms and faint nebula filaments compared to the 80mm class.
Sky-Watcher Evostar 80ED + HEQ5 Pro
- You'll unbox a complete imaging platform — OTA plus one of the most proven GoTo equatorial mounts in the hobby — and spend your first evening learning polar alignment and SynScan rather than agonising over which mount to pair with a bare tube.
- You'll have so much payload headroom on the HEQ5 Pro (13.6 kg capacity with a 3.2 kg OTA) that you can pile on a guidescope, filter wheel, dew heater, and heavy cooled camera without ever worrying about overloading — but you'll curse the ~10 kg mount head every time you carry it to the garden.
- You'll need to budget separately for a field flattener or 0.85× reducer/corrector, because without one your edge stars will streak noticeably on camera — the OTA alone doesn't deliver flat fields the way the Esprit does out of the box.
The dark side
Every scope has a personality. Here’s where each one gets difficult.
Sky-Watcher
Sky-Watcher Esprit 100ED
At £1,099 for a bare OTA with no mount, finder, or eyepieces, you're realistically looking at £2,500–£3,000+ before you take a single guided exposure — the sticker price is deceptive for newcomers.
The integrated field flattener demands exactly 55mm of back-focus spacing; get it wrong by even a millimetre or two and your edge stars stretch into seagulls, turning a premium optic into an expensive frustration.
At f/5.5, some narrowband filters — particularly Ha and OIII — can produce halos or uneven illumination across full-frame sensors, pushing you toward APS-C or requiring careful filter selection.
Sky-Watcher
Sky-Watcher Evostar 80ED + HEQ5 Pro
The ED doublet is not a true triplet apochromat, so you'll see slight residual chromatic aberration on bright stars at high magnification — negligible in imaging, but visible at the eyepiece on Vega or Sirius.
No field flattener is included in the bundle, and without one you'll get noticeable coma and field curvature at the sensor edges — it's an essential accessory that adds to the real cost of imaging.
The HEQ5 Pro head plus tripod weighs roughly 10 kg before counterweights, so every session involves lugging heavy metal, careful polar alignment, and waiting for the mount to cool — this is not a grab-and-go experience.
Which is right for you?
Two different buyers. Two different right answers.
The custom-rig optical tube
Sky-Watcher · Sky-Watcher Esprit 100ED
You already own a capable equatorial mount — perhaps an HEQ5 or EQ6-R — and you've outgrown an 80mm refractor's aperture and speed. You want flat, pinpoint stars across a full-frame sensor without buying a separate field flattener, and you're willing to pay a premium for a true triplet apochromat that will be the last widefield imaging refractor you need. You understand back-focus spacing, you own calipers, and you're not fazed by a £2,500+ total system cost. If you're a beginner hoping for a ready-to-use telescope, this isn't your scope.
The automated deep-sky platform
Sky-Watcher · Sky-Watcher Evostar 80ED + HEQ5 Pro
You're ready to commit to deep-sky astrophotography but you don't yet own a mount, and you want a single purchase that gets you a proven, well-supported imaging platform without the paralysis of matching OTA to mount. You'll accept modest 80mm aperture and a slower f/7.5 focal ratio in exchange for massive payload headroom that lets you grow into autoguiding and cooled cameras over time. You're comfortable learning polar alignment and stacking software, but you don't want to also research mounts from scratch. If you already own a solid equatorial mount and want the best optics per pound, the Esprit 100ED is the sharper investment.
Our verdict
This comparison has a catch: the Sky-Watcher Esprit 100ED 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 Sky-Watcher Esprit 100ED 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.
Sky-Watcher Esprit 100ED
View Sky-Watcher Esprit 100ED →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 | Sky-Watcher Esprit 100ED | Sky-Watcher Evostar 80ED + HEQ5 Pro |
|---|---|---|
Apertureⓘ The most important spec — bigger = more light = better views | 100mm | 80mm |
Focal Length Longer = more magnification potential | 550mm | 600mm |
Focal Ratio Lower f-number = wider field of view; higher = more magnification per eyepiece | f/5.5 | 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 with FMC on all air-to-glass surfaces | Fully multi-coated ED glass, FMC on all air-to-glass surfaces |
How do you point it?
| Spec | Sky-Watcher Esprit 100ED | 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 | Sky-Watcher Esprit 100ED | Sky-Watcher Evostar 80ED + HEQ5 Pro |
|---|---|---|
Focuser Size 2" accepts wider eyepieces and gives better low-power views | 2" | 2" |
Focuser Type Rack-and-pinion is standard; Crayford and dual-speed are smoother | Dual-speed Crayford (10:1 reduction, with 1.25" adapter) | Crayford dual-speed (with 1.25" adapter) |
Size & weight
| Spec | Sky-Watcher Esprit 100ED | Sky-Watcher Evostar 80ED + HEQ5 Pro |
|---|---|---|
OTA Weightⓘ Optical tube only — useful for comparing mount load capacity | 3.9kg | 2.2kg |
Total Weight Full setup including mount — this is what you lug to the car | — | 22.5kg |
Tube Length | 535mm | 600mm |
Tube Material | Aluminium, white powder coat | Aluminium, white powder coat |
What's in the box?
| Spec | Sky-Watcher Esprit 100ED | 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: Sky-Watcher Esprit 100ED advantage · Amber highlight: Sky-Watcher Evostar 80ED + HEQ5 Pro advantage · Greyed cells: equal or subjective.