Celestron StarSense Explorer dx 102az: Best Beginner Telescope?

What is the best beginner telescope? That's a question that all beginners ask . . . but it's also one that often crosses the minds of more experienced astronomers. In my case -- after more than 30 years of casual astronomy -- I still consider myself a beginner. Maybe I'm an advanced beginner, but still a beginner.

My opinion is that the best beginner telescope -- bar none -- is this one (if the price is under $400):

Celestron StarSense Explorer dx 102az

I'll go one step farther and say that this is the best grab-and-go scope on the market today. It has several very nice features: 

1. It's a refractor so there is no fussing with collimation. And you don't need to worry about your primary mirror collecting dust at the bottom of a deep tube. The 102 mm objective grabs enough light to see plenty of dim, fuzzy star-clusters and galaxies. The 660 mm focal length is just enough to allow magnification for planetary observing.
2. It has a simple alt-az mount. These mounts don't require counterweights so the entire scope can easily be lifted and carried to different locations in a suburban yard. Those pesky trees and neighborhood lights can be rendered less bothersome when a scope is so easily moved. The whole rig weighs less than 15 pounds.
3. The red-dot finder is a classic (fairly simple) system for locating objects in the night sky.
4. The included 25 mm Plossl eyepiece provides low 25x magnification with a wide field of view (2.3 degrees) and a pleasing 3.9 mm exit pupil. All of the Great Orion Nebula fits nicely into this field of view.
5. The included 10 mm Plossl eyepiece provides useful higher magnification (65x). This lets you enjoy Jupiter and its moons, knocking the brightness down enough so that you should be able to see some banding and the shadows of crossing moons.

But there are plenty of telescopes with those features (including my own grab-and-go). What sets the StarSense Explorer line of scopes apart is the "killer" phone app. Celestron has created a very clever mount to hold your cell phone on the altitude axis of the mount. A mirror directs of phone's camera lens toward the exact spot in the night sky that your scope sees. The StarSense app (which is similar to Celstron's classic SkySafari and SkyPortal app) uses arrows to guide you as you shove the main tube until it is aimed directly at any deep-sky object you select from a menu or from the star chart on the phone's display. Once you have selected something and pointed the scope at it, the app gives you an abundance of information, frequently including a brief audio lecture. One word of warning: you do need a modern phone (post-2016) that includes both an accelerometer and a gyro to get the directional pointing to work.

So that's great. For just $400 I could buy a brand-new grab-and-go scope with all the benefits and none of the drawbacks of a fully computerized scope. The thing is -- I already have a mighty nice grab-and-go scope:

That's a heavily modified Celestron NexStar 102SLT Computerized Telescope. I ripped the guts of the motorized drives out after knocking the whole rig over in the dark one night. I removed the red-dot finder and installed my foam finder. And, if you look closely, you'll see that I installed a mount for my phone right on top of the tube, as well as an inclinometer and setting circle. This means that the features of the SkyPortal app work just fine. Using the altitude and azimuth values provided by SkyPortal, I can aim at any deep sky object and be pretty sure I'll find it in my low-power field of view. The app also gives me a great star map to consult in the dark, and it gives me almost encyclopedic access to written and audio information. 

I still find my paper charts and printed notes are important to me and I'll still continue to get lost in space, . . . but the app, the inclinometer, and the setting circle can certainly help me find my way out again!