Celestron 52308 9-27 x 56 mm Hummingbird ED Micro Spotter Birder-Friendly Spotting Scope, Black

Ordered as a birthday treat to myself. It's tiny, but powerful. Useful for when a full size spotter is too heavy or ostentatious. Great to carry on hikes in a rucksack with a monopod or a lightweight carbon fibre tripod. Only negative comment is that the included zoom eyepiece is not brilliant and struggles with either the lowest zoom setting (apparent field of view is pretty tiny) or the higher end of the zoom range where it loses sharpness and dims a fair bit. It's ok for convenience, but budgeting for a couple of higher quality fixed eyepieces (or a better zoom) is very much recommended. I purchased a 25mm and a 9mm celestron X-cel eyepiece and they work great with this spotter. With the 25mm eyepiece you get an 8x zoom and a decent apparent field of view. With this low mag eyepiece the view is razor sharp, and super bright. The 9mm at the higher end zoom also performs much better than the supplied zoom. The interchangeable eyepiece capability is great! I've also tried it out for a bit of digiscoping which with a decent smartphone gives excellent results, particularly with the 25mm eyepiece. I can use the telephoto lens on my phone to get a bit more zoom if I need to, but with a lovely bright and sharp image. For the price I think this is great quality. I found the supplied bag a good fit, the zip is snug at the eyepiece end, but not over tight. I'm very pleased and I'm looking forward to getting out and about with it more in the future!

Wow... Just WOW ! I've been birdwatching for some time already and I have to say this scope is just a gem among birdwatching optics ! 1. Clarity and brightness in low light ! yes yes yes! 2. Great middle ground between binoculars and spotting scope - can be easily handheld because its 45° eyepiece - you just hold it tight , close to your body. I manage even 27x mag to look steady by hand - but midrange magnifications everyone can manage stable. 3.VERY PRECISE FOCUS ! 4. bag a bit tight but fits scope no problemo 5. great as telephoto lens to my iphone ( with attachment )

When reviewing this scope, I kept one thing in mind. At £260, you're not going to get Swarovski clarity and you don't. What you do get are very bright, clear images, even at the high end magnification. I haven't tried it in night light yet, as it only arrived in the last hour (7.30pm) and I have yet to try digiscoping with it. As soon as I do, I'll post an update. The case is FAR less impressive! In fact, it's nothing more than a cheap point & shoot camera bag, shaped to fit and it's FAR too small for the scope. Expect to spend 10 mins trying to squeeze it into the case. Celestron have a cheek to supply such a pathetic excuse for a case, with a scope that is not exactly inexpensive and they really need to up their game here. In conclusion, I would say go for it! Optics are sharp at this price point and it is worth the price. It's well constructed, focus and zoom are relatively smooth and for its size, it feels solid. The bag, however, is pathetic and you should look for another option, or do without.

This is a brilliant scope for bird watching or other nature watching, especially when hiking. Its actually easy to hold and use, but better on a monopod. Its really light and very bright. One thing to note, it does not work with the Celestron phone adaptor. Its not possible to get the phone flat with the Celestron adaptor and even if you do, you get a circular image in the middle of the screen, not a full image you can use for a photo.

works great with baader hyperion mark IV zoom, which puts the stock celestron zoom to shame. tiny but powerful scope, love it

Easy to hold and focus, plus accepts any standard eyepiece so isn't limited to the one that comes with it. Bright and stable, although you're going to need a tripod at longer magnifications.

Another “Prime” delivery product that failed to show, why advertise and give a guaranteed delivery date to prime customers then fail to meet the delivery time. By a week. Was able to cancel the delivery and get a refund.

I am pleased with the scope - just what I was after in terms of optics, size etc. However, I feel compelled to comment purely because of the case. I quite simply cannot get the scope into the case, as it is too tight a fit. I have just seen other reviews talking about the size of the bag. I have written to Celestron tech support, partly because I suspected they may have included the case for the 50mm version by accident. If I get a satisfactory response, I will update this post. However, not too impressed as a long-standing Celestron fan. Update 12 May 23 Kudos to Celestron USA for a really swift response, which resulted in a new case being sent. However, ...... it had precisely the same issue, and I cannot get the scope into either of the 2 cases. Clearly a design flaw and a lack of quality control that I would not have expected from Celestron. I will be writing to tell them and I am considering whether to return the scope and look elsewhere.

E' uno strumento ideale per chi ha bisogno di ingrandimenti maggiori rispetto ad un binocolo e vuole rinunciare a portarsi dietro un ingombrante e pesante spotting scope di dimensioni standard Nonostante le sue piccole dimensioni sa mostrare i muscoli per quanto riguarda brillantezza e correzione cromatica Forse l'unico difetto è rappresentato dal fatto che non si può acquistare senza oculare, non che sia scadente quello di serie,anzi, ma qualche utente come me che possiede già un telescopio con diversi oculari la prima cosa che fa è sostituirlo con uno migliore Consiglio vivamente di utilizzarlo con oculari celestron x-cel lx da 9mm e da 12mm che danno rispettivamente 22 e 16 ingrandimenti con uno splendido e definito campo visivo di 60° avrete una finestra sul mondo

Works very well for my Barebow event at 50 metres. Very clear optics. Highly sturdy body. Small and compact. Light weight so easy to move around.

This scope is extremely light and compact; the 56mm model has excellent light-gathering and smooth and accurate focusing. Ideal for travel!

Quality product with good zoom range, can be held by hand closely the whole range. As most zooms the low light performance is not very good but still can be used on lowest zoom in dark. The only problem is a binocular can be more enjoyable and a monocular can be smaller and lighter. But it’s still small and light enough to carry and put in pocket. If it’s the only one you have then it’s a competent equipment. It’s performance shines in day light. Resolution is good but not as sharp as high end full size binoculars even with less magnifications say 8x or 10x . If magnification is not the highest priority I find my self use more a full size 8x42 binocular. The bag is just perfect for both sizes, for the 56mm once it’s pushed inside the bag starts to expand from the sewing lines as you use it and take the shape and size needed. Better than a big bag that will ruin the purpose of compactness.

I purchased the Celestron Hummingbird 9-27x56mm ED scope primarily for birding and digiscoping. It's small size and comparatively light weight for taking on the trail (very often with kids and small dogs in tow too) were a must. It feels ruggedly designed and I have pretty good confidence in its robustness, but only time will tell. Because I care about image quality a lot, I will say that the included 9-27x zoom eyepiece does detract a bit in terms of quality, especially in the long end of the zoom range. There's softness and chromatic aberration particularly on the edges of the image. The eye relief isn't great, and I could see the brightness being a problem if you're in lower light situations. For this reason I gave the scope 4/5 for image quality but you can fix it so read on. This scope takes 1.25" astronomical eyepieces and I've paired it with the Celestron X-CEL 9mm eyepiece which gives it an effective magnification of about 22x. The image quality is excellent with this eyepiece, even to the edges and it helps with eye relief too. I digiscope with this eyepiece combined with the Celestron NexYZ cellphone adapter and a Pixel 6a and get great results when the phone is set to use the 2x magnification. (The normal caveats of digiscoping apply - this is not a replacement for a nice camera and long lens. In the attached picture of the house finch you can see some of the limitations of the technique.) I've also paired this with a carbon fiber tripod that I had and put a compact Smallrig video head on it to make pointing easier. So far we've mostly used it in the yard and through windows, and I can't wait to try it out in the field!