Find the best telescope deals at Walmart this holiday season with our detailed guide.
Walmart offers a fantastic selection of budget-friendly telescopes, including great options under $500, perfect for upgrading your astronomy gear without overspending. This page is regularly updated, ensuring you'll find reliable deals and quality products every time you visit.
We've included a range of options to suit every stargazer, from beginners to seasoned astronomers. If you don't see the right fit here, be sure to explore our guides for telescopes on Amazon and Best Buy telescopes, or check out our recommendations for the best telescopes, telescope deals, best binoculars, and binocular deals.
For the top telescope deals at Walmart and incredible savings on astronomy equipment scroll down and check out the deals below.
Telescopes at Walmart in 2024
Telescopes at Walmart: Best deals December 2024
Buying advice
When buying a telescope you need to consider two main factors: Your budget and what you want to view. There are three main types of telescopes out there, and figuring out what you want to view will help you decide what type of telescope you will need. There are refractors, reflectors and catadioptric telescopes.
For beginners, refractor telescopes are often a popular choice due to their easy-to-maintain and use style. They're often mounted to alt-azimuth mounts so they're straightforward to use and the mounts themselves are easy to manufacture so the price tends to be cost-effective too. They're best used for focussing on specific targets like moons and planets due to the fact that they're good for showing high-magnified and high-contrast images.
Reflector telescopes tend to have larger apertures and are better for low-magnification targets like nebulas and galaxies. You get two types of reflector telescopes: Dobsonians and Newtonians, although there's some crossover between these. In brief, though, Dobsonians are easier to maintain and often found attached to the alt-azimuth mount. Newtonians are more commonly affixed to equatorial mounts, which allow you to follow the rotation of the night sky more accurately, but they require more upkeep.
Finally, catadioptric telescopes fix issues found in both of the above types of scope – such as chromatic aberration and the coma effect – and they are typically equipped with a GoTo system. These systems are essentially mini-computers that align your telescope to particular night sky objects. You get two types of catadioptrics, the Schmidt-Cassegrain and the Maksutov-Cassegrain. As a general rule, the Maksutov-Cassegrain is better for viewing planets, while the Schmidt-Cassegrain models are a little more versatile and feature bigger apertures, so they’re preferred by astrophotographers.
Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: community@space.com.
