Review on SVBONY Red Laser Collimator: Perfect Alignment for your Newtonian Marca Telescope by Josh Tadder

I bought this item 21 months ago with my eyes wide open due to a calibration issue and of course mine arrived requiring the adjustment described in many other reviews. It was an easy fix and well worth the 30 minute effort to save 50% off the price. It has served me well for almost two years, but I would like to mention two issues I have encountered recently. I suspect I've just run out of device life, but I'm sharing my experience so people know what to expect. 1) I recently stayed for two nights on a trip and the first night had no problems, on the second night I noticed that the laser collimator was no longer calibrated. As sunset threatened and the moon rose early, I attempted to collimate by rotating the laser in the focuser and aiming it at the center of the "circle" created by the rotation. It didn't work and due to lack of a backup collimation tool/experience with other methods I lost recording time on a perfect night. As far as I know I didn't drop or injure the collimator between the first night and the second, so I'm not sure what got him so upset in one night. I don't have any useful solution to this problem other than checking again. Calibration prior to each imaging session, although this would require tools to diagnose and fix problems in the field, wasting valuable imaging time. Again this may be due to the age of my device but I've lost faith in its reliability and will most likely buy something of better quality (and unfortunately at a price) 2) The brightness control is worn out which sometimes makes it difficult to find a position to be in the laser stays on. This has been an issue for me with several different Astro products over the years and I'm not surprised it's happening here. However, it should be noted that after almost 2 years of use, I have had difficulties with this item on two fronts. However, he gets 4 stars for the work he has done for me during this time. I definitely got my money's worth.