My son had decided he wanted a telescope to look up at the stars last year and so I had a look online and saw a national geographic endorsed one selling on play.com for a few pence under ten pounds from memory. I thought that the price sounded reasonable as well as the fact that it was endorsed by national geographic too and so I ordered it for him.

When the telescope arrived it was packaged nicely in a cardboard box which showed a picture of the telescope on the front, the national geographic name and logo and from memory a nights sky too. My son was eager to get the telescope out of the box and have a play with it so I allowed him to open it straight away. The telescope itself is yellow with a black end and black eye piece. It has the national geographic logo on the actual telescope too. I was quite pleased with the look of the telescope to be honest as it seemed pretty sturdy but looked nice too. The telescope comes with a small tripod too which to be honest isn't wonderful but for the money it was nice to have one included.

Now, our problems started pretty much straight away with the telescope because despite reading the instructions it took quite a long time to get any focus whilst looking through the telescope. The next issue which we had was simply that my son couldn't see anything in the sky with the telescope! Now somewhat naively I had presumed that my son would be able to have at least an average look up in to the sky using this telescope but he just couldn't see anything apart from our neighbour's houses! I must have looked like some psycho stalker as I peered out of his bedroom window with the telescope to my eye trying to get some reasonable view for my son! The telescope has a 30mm optical lens and up to thirty times magnification which I guess isn't much at all but I was just expecting a bit more despite the low price....I should have thought a bit more really.

My son hasn't really bothered with the telescope at all since the first week or so that he had it because he can't use it for its intended purpose however sometimes when his friends come round and they play role play type games he will get it out and use it as they pretend to be pirates or what not! The telescope looks quite nice on his window sill in his bedroom but in all honesty it was a waste of money really and I certainly wouldn't advise buying this telescope if you are serious about seeing what is in the sky (though I am sure anyone who is serious about that is reading this and laughing at my naivety anyway!)

I think I was probably swayed by the fact that the national geographic people endorsed this product which is a shame to be honest because it has been a waste of money which will no doubt end up in the bin before long. I would certainly say save your money and don't buy this telescope.

Thank you for reading my review!