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We need more of these thorough reviews. Great job!

Good review. Few points: 1. I have the EXACT same problem you mentioned where the RA drifts if I move the DEC north and south. It is very reproducible. I have only noticed it when I was doing Planetary imaging. I sent a video of this 6 months ago to iOptron. They were very slow to respond. Said that they are not sure what is the cause and never heard back from them. It is absolutely laughable that they pretend they did not hear of this issue before. Whether that issue affects astrophotography I have no idea. Your explanation seems reasonable though. 2. The issue with the Azimuth polar alignment is that the mechanism also anchors the mount to the tripier plate. So when you losen the scews, it also loosens the mount. If the mount is extremely unbalanced, then it will slightly tilt , which in turn will throw your polar alignment off when your tighten the Azimuth screws. I have always had them mostly tight when I get close, just enough to be able to adjust the azimuth, and then tighten full. I have had no issues with the Altitude levers. They have been very precise and it keeps its PA even after being tightened. I leave the scope and mount out in my backyard for weeks and sometimes months and it holds the polar alignment very very well. 3. I have used the HAE69ec with the ASIair exclusively but plan on using a fully fledged PHD2 soon. It has been guiding better than your results even close to celestial equator. That being said it is definitely seeing dependent. On average it spends most of its time around 0.4". Bad seeing will get it closer to 0.5-0.6". Good seeig or farther frome the celestial equator and it will easily get to 0.3". 4. I have to say I am very addicted to Harmonic mounts at this point. No balancing and light weight is hard to beat. 5. I believe I pointed out the fact that the mount has high precision encoders not absolute encoders on CN. Glad you cleared that up. 6. iOptron's support is terrible in my experience. Any time there is a question about guiding, they send you a PDF about how to tighten the belts. They won't even respond to my emails at this point even though I may have emailed them twice in 6 months. They really don't care. Tightening the belts involves removing the front plate with multiple wires attached to the board that are very difficult to remove without potential serious damage to the board. 7. By the way, did you ever figure out why on earth they put a "bubble level" under the mount head, where it is impossible to look at that bubble? Personally, I am keeping the mount and getting decent results, but I will never buy an iOptron mount again. Hopefully we get more high payload capacity harmonic mounts from other manufacturers. Looking to skywatcher for the 150i.

Great review! My HAE69CEC Dec backlash measured at 235 +/-44 ms in PHD2. I'm keeping good polar alignment by partially tightening, re-adjusting, and repeating until tight. I think the main issue with the base is that it allows conversion to Alt-Az mode, so it needs to be somewhat mechanically sloppy. I agree, I'd like to see a version with the CEM70 base. I personally switched from the CEM70 because I'm partially disabled and getting older, so it's getting harder to handle the counterweights.

Impressive mount review, keep up the good work! 👌

Thank you for your excellent reviews! My friend, who has the same mount, encountered guiding issues and poor results in PHD2 until he changed the settings from LowPass2 to Hess and Stree, and increased the guiding exposure to 4 seconds, despite PHD2 recommending LowPass2. With these adjustments, he achieved a total RMS of approximately 0.38 using the EdgeHD 11" under poor seeing conditions in a Bortle 9 sky, without a counterweight. I received my exact mount about a week ago, but I haven't had the chance to test it yet since it arrived just a day before my vacation to Europe. I plan to try it out next Friday with my EdgeHD 9.25 scope and will post an update then. Clear night!

Fairly new to the hobby. I have a cem26, and honestly I just tighten it down enough to where it’s firm but can still adjust for PA. Then I leave it be. I think the weight on it is enough to where I haven’t had any movement, also due to the thread pitch of the adjusters, it would take excessive force to move it. I’m usually around .5-.7 total RMS. But that’s just me…. I’m curious as it might be a buffer when slewing while tracking, maybe take a dry erase marker and mark it before, then slew around, when it drifts back, see if it returns to the original spot if that makes sense. Great video! I honestly love encoders, use them a lot at work. They basically just keep the servo motor honest. Hope some of my info helped you or others reading.

Thx for this review. I was on the fence to get this HAE69. I do own the HAE43EC which works fine, but I noticed the RA drift a couple of times when observing the moon. I noticed the tracking was stopped for a moment. After small manual adjustments. I did sell my CEM70 recently…. Might not be the best decision I made recently. I have had many iOptron mounts (7) and the PA is a PITA. But is doable.. what I do know is that with strainwave mounts you get the best results when the ota is well balanced. A light tail heavy unbalance works great. I use a TEC140ED of 15kg on the HAE43 and it guides good. I bought the 43 more for grap and go…. I will wait until there is serious CEM70 specs like strainwave. Keep up these reviews.

I own a HEM27EC which is a hybrid harmonic mount and I am able to image unguided for upto 60 seconds before I notice star trails. But this is only after perfect polar alignment and a super sturdy tripod. I just use the default PHD2 settings and use guiding assistant to find optimum settings. I usually allow the encoder to most of the work by using 4 to 5 second PHD2 exposures. From what I understand, harmonic mounts with an encoder cannot compete with the like of a CEM70 because of the high PEC. Actually the encoder makes a harmonic mount work like a regular mount without an encoder. Either way the encoder helps with long focal lengths over 1000mm. Thanks for the video!

It would be great if you could post the test methodologies you used (assuming your collaborators agree). There are enough of us out here with the mount that it would be useful for us to have a common benchmark to compare and build a broader base profile of the mounts performance. Thank you for such a thorough review.

Comprehensive review, well done!

Sry detailed and well thought and presented review. I love strain test mounts because of their portability as I am disabled and a big heavy mount is almost impossible for me to carry constantly, but of coarse imaging demands that the mount aligns properly to the NCP and keeps that alignment. For the price I think you are right, it has great potential but still needs some work. Thank you for your video. Best regards Luis from NY

Thanks for the second part of the review. I'm on the fence for HAE69BEC, and this review makes the fence a little taller. lol I've seen reports on CN of people, who acknowledged the PA issue, being able to zero out the PA the same way you did, that is by pre-tensioning the ALT and AZ knobs. I guess it's finicky but it can be done once the procedure is developed. UPD: I agree with your earlier comment that we shouldn't have to do this exercise with a $6k mount.

Love your videos and great review. I own a CEM70EC and disagree with your statement about the CEM70 not having an issue with PA . If you loosen the Alt screws to acquire PA then tighten them again once you have PA then PA shifts a considerable amount. For this reason I tend to force PA in Alt against a tightened clamp screw which is no good for the brass half gear on the Alt adjustment. Also, there's a new version of Commander 9.13 - I don't think it improve your issues but may be worth a shot.

ありがとうございます！

I have an HAE-29EC and haven't experienced the issues you have identified. I have been able to get it polar aligned to within 1' pretty easily, though I have to make sure the locks are very tight. I'm using the carbon fibre tripod rather than pier though. I've been able to image unguided for several minutes with perfect star shapes but that's with a 250mm focal length redcat51. I've not noticed either significant backlash or the cross contamination issues in slewing the axes but will watch out for them. Thanks for the thorough review!

Ok. Not gonna buy this mount. Thank you for this brutally honest review !

Bedankt

Julien, first of all, Awesome review!!! I wish more reviewers out there took the quantifiable results approach that you use. Secondly I apologize for the late reply, I originally passed on this video since I neither have the mount nor was I interested in purchasing it but you caught me with the Japan video and I just kept watching this next! Despite not necessarily being interested in buying one I did very much enjoy seeing the methods you used to quantify your results. One thing I am interested in is, did you have to set up a pointing model? I have a Paramount MyT which has a similar relative encoder system to the HAE69C and I also recently received an A-P Mach2GTO and both of those mounts don't really do their best work until the pointing model is complete and in place. Also in the case of the Paramount MyT you really need to to a PEC model as well. Next observation is that with my ZWO AM5 I found that I got my best results like you did with this mount. By polar aligning with slight RA and Dec drift and setting an appropriately low MinMo and aggressiveness I found that I could pretty much always be correcting in just one direction and avoid the horrendous backlash that my AM5 has. Keep going with the great videos!

Thanks!

Mr. Geek, Great review as always! Someone could think this is great performance; let’s get it. I have done this once based on reviews of IOptron mount. Got total sheeit, no specification worked. I just wonder why AP, 10um, Tak, PlaneWave didn’t give you any mount and telescope for review. Didn’t you?

Hummmm, I was hoping for a better review, I'm in the market for a new mount that can handle the weight of heavier OTA's such as my 14"

I believe the software after some time si pointing automatically back to the target placing it in the center of the frame.

Great review, not great price

Nice review, I'm curious if iOptron will have anything to say regarding the DEC backlash. Regarding the Polar alignment, my strategy is to partially lock the axis before the last adjustment. This gives me very reasonable PA numbers.

I’m wondering if you enabled RA guiding in the handset settings. I had to do that for the HAE43EC to get ST-4 guiding to work from my solar Hinode guider.

thanks!

6:45 Can you explain the high frame rate methodology you used? I'd like to do that with my mount. Excellent review!! I wish someone would explain mire thise cross contamination issue❤. I have that with an AM5.

How would we identify the latest PCB in our mounts ? Is there a different part number or firmware version ? Thanks for this info .

I'm researching for an upgrade for my AVX mount which I use for my C8 SCT, OAG, ASI174mm , Starizona focal reducer and ASI071MC Pro. Weight is about 19lbs. I image primarily at 1442mm with the focal reducer. Using NINA. Would a more traditional mount like a CEM40 be better than a strain wave mount for a SCT? Does the CEM40 have the same PA issues? My AVX will move a little but usually I can get NINA TPPA under 1". Thanks.

Great review. Same terrible iOptron performance and quality. I hear that ZWO is coming out with the AMS 10 which will be for heavy OTAs. Be patient.

I am considering upgrading to either the CEM120 or the HAE69C (C-EC). I already have the Tri Pier. Additionally, the recently added AM5N has reduced its periodic error by half. The fact that it is priced at half of the HAE69EC also piques my interest. Which equatorial mount do you think would be less affected by wind with equipment weighing around 16kg? Personally, I'm leaning towards the HAE69C (or EC), but I would appreciate any advice. Also, I'm curious about the wind resistance of the HAE69C as a travel mount. Thank you in advance.

Thanks so much for this review. It's disappointing the HAE69 mount is not quite fully baked. Sadly, this is the only strain wave option for heavy OTAs unless you have $8.5K for the Rainbow Astro RST-300. I wish ZWO or Sky-Watcher would release larger strain wave mounts (or even better, maybe someday Astro-Physics or Software Bisque will release strain wave mounts).

THe problem you have with the base of your mount is also shared with many other IOptron mounts. I currently own a GEM45, and it has the exact same issue, because it hase the exact same design. You can mitigate it, but never fully resolve it.

Did you record and use PEC

So that’s what you got in Tokyo!

I am going to pass on getting this mount. Thanks for the video.

That software analyzing the centroid position to detect oscillations should be implemented in PhD2 or released. Plenty of people may have that issue. Im sure iOptron knew it. After watching half of the video I can say I wont buy an iOptron mount

The inability to get an accurate polar alignment is an immediate deal breaker. I own a CEM40 (an older model) and was seriously considering upgrading to the 69HAE (non-EC). More payload capacity at a lighter weight is very appealing. I'm honestly shocked at how poorly this mount performed. The guide graph you share paints a pretty ugly picture. Sure, the overall RMS was around 0.5"; however, the various spikes are disheartening. I would expect a mount, especially one equipped with encoders, to be far more stable. Then again, your polar alignment was so far off, I'm skeptical of the accuracy of the end results.

Great idea poorly implemented. This just shows the power of testing to find the hidden problems that show up I all equipment. Thanks for the video.

Don't send the mount back. They won't notice it missing..😊 OK.. sorry..just watched the entire review..send it back to Shenzen..

Thanks!