Celestron – Hummingbird 56mm Angled Spotting Scope – Ultra Portable Micro Spotting Scope – 9-27x Zoom Eyepiece – Fully Multi-Coated and ED Glass Optics – Rubber Armored – Tripod Adaptable

I purchased the Celestron Hummingbird 9-27x56mm ED scope primarily for birding and digiscoping. It's small size and comparatively light weight for taking on the trail (very often with kids and small dogs in tow too) were a must. It feels ruggedly designed and I have pretty good confidence in its robustness, but only time will tell.Because I care about image quality a lot, I will say that the included 9-27x zoom eyepiece does detract a bit in terms of quality, especially in the long end of the zoom range. There's softness and chromatic aberration particularly on the edges of the image. The eye relief isn't great, and I could see the brightness being a problem if you're in lower light situations. For this reason I gave the scope 4/5 for image quality but you can fix it so read on.This scope takes 1.25" astronomical eyepieces and I've paired it with the Celestron X-CEL 9mm eyepiece which gives it an effective magnification of about 22x. The image quality is excellent with this eyepiece, even to the edges and it helps with eye relief too. I digiscope with this eyepiece combined with the Celestron NexYZ cellphone adapter and a Pixel 6a and get great results when the phone is set to use the 2x magnification. (The normal caveats of digiscoping apply - this is not a replacement for a nice camera and long lens. In the attached picture of the house finch you can see some of the limitations of the technique.)I've also paired this with a carbon fiber tripod that I had and put a compact Smallrig video head on it to make pointing easier. So far we've mostly used it in the yard and through windows, and I can't wait to try it out in the field!

Wow, very impressed with this scope. It's sturdy but lightweight, the image is very sharp and bright with the included lens. Can hand hold without any shakiness, or attach to a lightweight tripod. The zoom works well. The lens can be changed out and I can attach my camera that has an adapter.I also have the Celestron Mak scope and binoculars. This has a sharper image and much easier to use. The Mak requires a heavy duty tripod and is hard to see anything high in the sky.The case is nice and easy to put the scope into, though it has a cheap strap that the plastic attach clip broke. The price of this was high, but I'm happy with it and will be my go to scope to use.

This small scope is a good buy. I have a larger Bushnell Legend Ultra HD 20-60x80 scope and when I compare it with this scope I do notice that things look a little better on the Bushnell, but this scope by no means is a slouch. I once noticed some fairly severe chromatic aberration while watching some Mourning Doves at a sizable distance (cranked the zoom up) in a tree at dusk with the sky in the background, but that was a rare case, most of the time any chromatic aberration is only present as a yellow color on the very edge of the image or faintly sometimes outside the center (these observations though are reduced or are gone when you observe things closer or in better lighting or another situation, that is, not at dusk with a sky in the background, I watched some sparrows at a somewhat close distance and *the image is superb*). This scope is better than my Bushnell Legend Ultra HD 10x42mm Binoculars (which are rated high by others for quality) while being the same weight and more zoom. This is like a hybrid between a scope and a binocular, the portability of a binocular with the zoom of a scope (albeit not to 60x zoom). I use this scope with an Amazon Basics 50 Inch Tripod, the weight is soo light it's amazing. The weight of my previous scope setup was definitely an annoyance, this scope is very light. All-in-all a very small scope that packs a punch, quality is good and is perfect for light and easy birding.

Celestron Hummingbird 9-27x56mm EDSuper small and lightweight. Excellent blend of build and optical quality, size, and weight for the cost.Optics perform their best at mid-power. Little bit of spherical distortion at low-power. At the highest power, the optics don't perform as well, including fuzzyness (depends on object-to-subject distance, the farther away, the worse it is, usually in terms of hundreds of yards) and a little bit of chromatic aberration. However, the ED glass does a wonderful job overall and the CA is only slightly noticeable at the highest power.Really excels in the 10-40 ft object-to-subject range.I had no problem with light-gathering with the 56mm objective.Digiscoping is a little rough, because the power knob is right where any adapters are going to want to grip the scope. If you want to change power with a clamp-on adapter attached, forget about it.The lens caps are not very good. The eyepiece one in particular falls off easily. If you're worried about keeping dirt out, I'd just throw the whole scope in a plastic bag instead.

Pros: Lightweight and portableCons: Stiff focus and zoom. Barely fits in case.Optics are good at no zoom, for about 40 yards or so. Any zooming or any viewing beyond that, then you will surely be disappointed with the horrible image quality. Will stick with my 10x20 Leupolds for my birdwatching.