Zhumell was a relatively small brand owned by Hayneedle, a large eCommerce vendor that was acquired by Walmart’s Jet.com. Over the past few years, it seemed like Hayneedle had been trying to exit the amateur telescope market, which would have been the end of Zhumell. As many guessed, it looks like they’ve finally done it—although no official announcement has been made. Most of their telescopes are out of stock throughout 2025. I certainly miss Zhumell already, especially their tabletop Dobsonians.
Zhumell’s telescope offerings included their 100mm, 114mm, and 130mm Z-series tabletop Dobsonians; their 8–12” full-sized Z-series Dobsonians; a few low-priced, low-quality refracting and reflecting telescopes; and a handful of other items such as a decent laser collimator, a photo tripod, a half-decent 1.25” eyepiece/filter kit, a 2” 2x Barlow, some basic filters, 20×80 and 25×100 binoculars, some smaller roof prism binoculars, and a few junk-quality refracting and Bird-Jones telescopes. Few other well-known manufacturers have a product line this small, especially ones that cater mainly to beginners like Zhumell.
Zhumell’s Legacy of Affordable Quality
Where exactly Zhumell gets most of their products is unknown—probably some manufacturer in China—but their 8”, 10”, and 12” Z-series Dobsonians were made by Guan Sheng Optical (GSO) in Taiwan.
Not only did the Z series telescopes offer great value, but the GSO-made optics were outstanding—the last Zhumell telescope I had, a Z8, optically tested almost as good as a premium mirror of the same aperture, with only some slight undercorrection compared to the near-perfect mirror, which I paid over $1000 for! The included accessories with the larger Z series scopes were also outstanding for the price, though the mini Z series tabletop scopes came with rather poor eyepieces. Zhumell was but only one of many importers of GSO telescopes and accessories, but it seemed to be the most widely known one after the Apertura brand, particularly among novice astronomers.
The workmanship on all but Zhumell’s cheapest telescopes and accessories was pretty good, as was to be particularly expected with GSO products.
There really isn’t much else to say about Zhumell telescopes, though this is neither good nor bad. Their customer service was quite decent—I’ve had no issues.
I’m looking at used scopes online and found a Zhumell 114 1000. Is this one of the, “few low-priced, low-quality refracting and reflecting telescopes” they made?
Yes, Bird-Jones, avoid at all costs, it has very bad optics