SVBony SV550 Triplet - Review

Tulip Nebula in widefield with the SVBony SV550 triplet!

SVBONY graciously sent this unit to me for review.

Disclaimer: This review is not sponsored. I was not paid to express my opinions about this scope. Whatever I say below is an honest description of my experience with this scope.

A true review a triplet design and test for the optics is only possible with broadband data. Unfortunately since the moon was out, I only captured narrowband data. A test of the optics will be posted soon with detailed analysis on CA, if any, along with my take on value for money for this scope! for now, just speaking about build quality.

The SVBony SV550 is an apochromatic triplet design with FPL-51 glass. It's 80mm aperture at f6 giving it a focal length of 480mm enough for widefield shots like these. It has a 2.5" dual speed 10:1 rack and pinion focuser which is sturdy, well made and locks in place with a thumbscrew. I had no focus shift through the night. I also imaged this target on multiple nights, removing and transporting it every time but still the focus was maintained.

Sliding dew shield makes this unit compact and easy to carry around. SVBony also provided me with a 1X field flattner which is really heavy and appears to be well made. It threads directly on to the camera rotator (which you have to buy separately) and has M48 threads on camera side. Sheer weight of the camera and the field Flattner makes this scope incredibly back heavy. The camera rotator and the field Flattner can be bought as a package.

The scope ships with a 180 mm dovetail which is small and you won't be able to balance the rig with the stock dovetail. For me, the focus knobs kept on hitting the dovetail clamp on my eq6r pro. I had to add an additional weight to the front of the scope to balance it properly. You could also add telescope risers to the rings and slide the scope forward to achieve balance.

I imaged the tulip nebula with an Lextreme filter. The stars were sharp edge to edge and i did not see any kind of backfocus issues/tilt in my images. The threaded design does help. The backfocus distance is also standard at 55mm which means you can use your zwo adapters, filter drawer etc to achieve the right backfocus.

The build quality is top notch!

I will be posting part 2 of this review soon with broadband data! The images below are highly compressed. You can find better quality images here - https://www.instagram.com/astrodarks