Baader Planetarium Sky Surfer III / 30mm Red Dot Finder

I really like this finder. In fact, I now have two of them and the one I bought recently has been improved from the one I bought a year ago. Both of my finders work very well, have nicely adjustable brightness (especially on the newer version), do not collect dew easily, and have a nice positive click when turning on or off (so I don't accidentally run the button battery down). It comes with several ways of mounting the finder (I have attached to Vixen-style dovetail base) and is light, which makes balancing a telescope easy. Overall, I think this is an excellent value in unit power red dot finders.

placed it on my telescope and was able to aim at the planets precisely. the only reason i rated four stars is because the laser was a bit bright even with the low setting. but it was able to get the object in my telescopes field of view.

Never worked at all. I tried replacing the battery with a brand-new one, but it still didn't work.

Given the price I expected it would be built using better materials. Its all plastic and even though the red dot can be dimmed it's still pretty bright at night, however I expect that's better then a similar finder I saw online that is much less expensive that does not have a dimmer. It includes various mounts to fit a range of scope manufacturers.Depite the plastic casing, it does the job I purchased it for and am able to line up my Celestron Edge HD 8 to center an object at lower magnification. I use it primarily for a rough polar alignment.

Excellent product

There's a lot to like about this finder, physically. Lots of bits to attach it to whatever you have, and it feels good compared to cheaper red dot finders. All wonderful until you turn it on and see that the red dot doesn't seem to sit at infinity in the star field as it should. I can move my head back and forth and the red dot walks back and forth among the stars, almost completely ruining its utility as a finder. I expect better from Baader.