DwarfLab

DwarfLab DWARF 3 Smart Telescope

An ultra-portable dual-lens smart telescope that fits in a jacket pocket. DWARF 3 pairs a wide and a telephoto lens with full automation, making it a versatile little imager for deep sky, wide starfields and even daytime nature, all from an app.

76/ 100

Polaris Score

Performance · ease · portability · upgrade path

See the breakdown ↓

Aperture

35mm

Focal Length

150mm

Focal Ratio

f/4.3

Mount Type

Integrated Alt-Az GoTo

Optical Design

Smart Refractor

Weight

1.3 kg

From$549

$82 above 90-day low

Price tracked by PolarisObserved 36 timesTracking since Jun 2026

See captured results →

Where to buy

Agena AstroProductsPartnerBest price$549→High Point Scientific$549→

Verified 19h ago · prices tracked daily

What it's built forOpen these in the simulator →

This telescope was built to capture, not to squint.

Point it, tap a target, and it stacks a live image on your phone — color and faint detail no eyepiece will show you. The trade is simple: the experience lives on a screen, not at an eyepiece.

Fully automated captureStacks live in the app

The view people remember

The Orion Nebula, wings unfolded.

The four stars of the Trapezium sit inside folded sheets of glowing gas — the closest stellar nursery to us, bright enough to show real structure even from the suburbs.

See Orion Nebula through this telescope →

Where else it shines

Rewards a dark sky

Andromeda Galaxy

Long-exposure capture revealing galaxy core and outer structure

Open view →

Needs patience

Ring Nebula

Planetary nebula captured with characteristic ring or shell visible

Open view →

Easy first target

The Pleiades

Field rich with stars — long exposure pulls in fainter members

Open view →

Also excellent on

Saturn

Processed planetary capture with rings or bands clearly visible

Open view →

✦

Purists will miss the eyepiece. The magic here is the image on the screen, not the photons in your own eye.

01What it's good at

What it's best at — and the trade-offs.

Best at

✓Dual wide and telephoto lenses cover everything from big nebulae to tighter deep-sky framing.

✓It is remarkably small and light, genuinely a grab-and-go travel imager.

✓Full automation handles pointing, tracking and live stacking from your phone.

✓Features like panorama and wide-field mosaics suit large targets and the Milky Way.

Trade-offs

!The tiny apertures limit how faint and detailed the results get.

!Everything runs through the app, so features depend on firmware updates.

!It is a deep-sky and landscape imager, not a planetary instrument.

!Small battery and body mean shorter sessions and more sensitivity to wind.

02In plain English

What These Numbers Mean

Aperture

35 mm (telephoto lens)

Very small optics, so this is not a light bucket. It works by stacking many short exposures rather than gathering a lot of light at once, which means bright nebulae and large clusters come out well while faint small galaxies stay out of reach.

Focal length

150 mm telephoto, 3.4 mm wide

The 150 mm lens gives a wide field that suits large nebulae, the Andromeda Galaxy and the Milky Way, and the second wide lens covers landscape and eclipse-style scenes. Two focal lengths in one body is unusual in this class and makes it more of a general astro camera than a telescope.

Focal ratio

f/4.3

Fast optics keep sub-exposures short, which is what allows usable images to build within minutes on a lightweight mount. Speed is doing the work here that aperture does in a conventional telescope.

Optical design

Sealed dual-lens smart imager

There is no eyepiece and nothing to collimate. You watch the image build on your phone as the onboard computer stacks frames, so the experience is closer to using a camera app than to observing at a telescope.

Weight

1.3 kg

Under 3 lb including the mount, so it fits in a small bag with a travel tripod. This is the size that makes a dark-sky trip a matter of packing rather than planning.

Mount

Integrated motorised alt-azimuth

The mount, camera and processing are one sealed unit that plate-solves and tracks by itself, so setup is a few taps. Alt-azimuth tracking and short exposures mean it stacks many brief frames rather than taking long ones.

02The Polaris Score

How it scores, and why.

76/ 100

DwarfLab DWARF 3 Smart Telescope

Performance

Ease of use

Portability

Upgrade potential

Polaris weighs optical capability, how easy the scope is to live with, how portable it is, and how far it takes you before you outgrow it — not list price or brand.

03Who it's for