Zhumell Z100 Telescope Reviewed – Editor’s Choice

The Zhumell Z100 Optical Tube

The Z100 is a 100mm (3.93”) f/4 Newtonian reflector. At such a fast focal ratio, you’d expect there to be coma and you’d indeed be right. It’s not noticeable with the stock 17mm and 10mm eyepieces, but with a lower magnification eyepiece like a 25mm Plossl, you’ll start to spot it at the edges of the field of view.

Additionally, at f/4 precise collimation is critical for optimal performance with any reflector. Unfortunately, the folks at Zhumell have declined to offer this crucial feature and the primary mirror sits in a static, non-collimatable cell. Thankfully the scope holds collimation pretty well over time, but the lack of adjustments is mildly concerning to say the least, and be prepared for Zhumell to not be of much assistance in replacing or fixing an out-of-collimation scope.

The Z100’s secondary mirror is collimatable, but you shouldn’t ever need to touch it. The primary losing collimation is a far bigger concern.

The Z100’s focuser is a 1.25” rack-and-pinion consisting partially of plastic. It works adequately. The scope attaches to its tabletop Dobsonian mount using a short, metal Vixen dovetail.

Accessories

The Z100 comes with two eyepieces: A 17mm Kellner (24x) and a 10mm Kellner (40x). These eyepieces are certainly decent (though they do lack rubber eyecups, which I find annoying) and are made entirely of metal and glass – no plastic to be found, unlike the eyepieces supplied with many cheaper telescopes. The 10mm is, however, rather short on eye relief and its short physical length may result in your nose bumping into the telescope while viewing.

The scope could theoretically take up to 150-200x, but the mount is a little annoying to use above 100x or so and the optics max out at around 150x from my experience. 

The most crucial additional accessory we would recommend for this scope would be a 6mm “gold-line” eyepiece or a 2x Barlow lens. The 6mm Goldline gives you 66x magnification, allowing for better planetary views than with the 40x provided by the stock 10mm Kellner. Alternatively, the 2x Barlow coupled with the stock 10mm eyepiece provides 80x. If you can only pick one we would recommend the 6mm Goldline, but if you’re able to buy both you could also Barlow the 6mm eyepiece for an astounding 133x, which is about at the practical limit of what this telescope can provide.

The Z100 also includes a standard red dot sight, which works just fine for this telescope. 

Mount

The Z100 comes on a fairly utilitarian tabletop Dobsonian mount, which it attaches to via a plastic Vixen dovetail saddle. The mount is made mostly of particle board with some sort of laminate glued on, but the azimuth bearings are in fact real Teflon pads. The altitude bearing is not of the conventional Dobsonian design but works nonetheless. Additionally, the mount has a small cutout for use as a handle. 

If you don’t have a sturdy enough table or bar stool to set the Z100 on, the bottom of the mount has a ¼ 20 threaded hole so you can attach it to most photo tripods. You can also set the scope on the hood of your car, which is arguably a more stable option than a lot of cheap tripods or folding tables.

What can you see?

The Z100 will offer great views of the Moon and decent views of Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Venus will show its phases, Mars its ice caps and maybe a few dark areas at opposition, and Jupiter and Saturn will show their moons and cloud belts – Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is also visible, as are Saturn’s majestic rings and the gap between them known as the Cassini Division. Uranus and Neptune are also visible as tiny bluish dots, but are a bit tricky to locate. 

A small, inexpensive refractor may do a slightly better job on the planets than the Z100, but the Z100’s larger aperture makes it superior for viewing deep-sky objects, and it’s also far more lightweight, compact, and portable than a refractor.

Outside the solar system, the Z100 can show you thousands of double stars, and hundreds of open star clusters. You’ll be able to spot globular clusters as fuzzy smudges, a few dozen of the brightest galaxies, and with luck maybe pick out hints of detail in a few such as the dust lanes in M82 or M31. Doing this will require dark skies, however. The Z100 is also capable of showing various bright nebulae like Orion, the Lagoon, the Dumbbell, and the Ring, which will look great even from light-polluted skies.

Alternative recommendations

There aren’t a whole lot of alternatives to the Z100 that are any good at or below its price. The Orion SkyScanner is basically identical to the Z100. Besides the SkyScanner, here’s what we might recommend instead:

• Zhumell Z114  – A bit more aperture, collimatable, but more expensive.
• Meade Infinity 70 – Less aperture, but a full-sized tripod and arguably better planetary views.
• Meade Infinity 80 – Similar views to the Z100 but without the worries of collimation and with a full-sized tripod.

Aftermarket accessory recommendations

The f/4 focal ratio of the Z100 prevents the use of a 25mm or 32mm Plossl for wider fields of view A 6mm “gold-line”  will provide 67x. For even more magnification, you could add a 2x Barlow lens to get 80x with the included 10mm and 133x with the 6mm goldline – which are pretty decent magnifications for lunar/planetary viewing with a telescope of the Z100’s size and capabilities. But beyond an extra eyepiece and/or Barlow, we’d hesitate to recommend additional accessories for the Z100 in lieu of simply purchasing a larger telescope like the Z114 or Z130.