Dwarf Draco vs Dwarf 3 vs Seestar S50 Pro: Which Smart Telescope Should You Buy?

Short answer: buy the Dwarf 3 if £459 is the budget and you want to start this autumn; buy the Seestar S50 Pro if you can stretch to £899 and want the most capable smart telescope you can hold in your hands today; pre-order the Dwarf Draco only if 90mm of aperture and five-minute guided exposures are what you've been waiting for, you can live with 5.5kg, and you're comfortable being an early adopter. The Dwarf Mini at £389 is for finding out whether the hobby sticks. Nobody has tested a Draco yet, so every Draco figure below is DwarfLab's own; we'll update this page when review units arrive in November.

Updated 7 September 2026, the Draco's launch day. Prices from First Light Optics and DwarfLab on that date.

Dwarf Mini vs Dwarf 3 vs Dwarf Draco: which DwarfLab should you buy?

DwarfLab now sell three smart telescopes, and the range makes more sense than it did a week ago. The Dwarf Mini and Dwarf 3 are the same idea at two price points: a 150mm focal length lens the size of a paperback, a wide-angle camera alongside it, a dual-band filter for nebulae and a battery that lasts the night. The Mini has a 30mm lens and a 2MP sensor; the Dwarf 3 a 35mm lens, an 8MP sensor with four times the detail and a better wide camera. For £70 more the Dwarf 3 is the one to buy of the two, and it's the one we recommend on our best smart telescopes page.

The Draco is not a bigger Dwarf 3. It's a different class of instrument that happens to run the same app. Ninety millimetres of aperture is six and a half times the light of the Dwarf 3 and nine times the Mini's. It's 5.5kg against 1.35kg, it needs the included tripod or a table rather than a fence post, and its five-hour battery is shorter than the Dwarf 3's six because it's driving guiding, a bigger sensor and motorised filters. Think of the Mini and Dwarf 3 as smart telescopes you carry, and the Draco as one you set up.

Verdict: Dwarf 3 for almost everyone starting out; Mini only if £70 matters; Draco for Dwarf 3 owners who've hit its limits and know they'll use the extra aperture.

Dwarf Draco vs Dwarf 3: is it worth £840 more?

Here is what the money buys. Aperture: 90mm against 35mm, so a galaxy that takes two hours to build on the Dwarf 3 should reach the same depth in well under half an hour, and objects the Dwarf 3 can't reach at all come into range. Exposure: 300-second guided subs against 60 seconds, which is the single biggest difference for faint nebulae, because long subs lift faint signal above the sensor's read noise in a way that stacking short ones never quite does. Resolution: the Draco's lens resolves detail two and a half times finer, which is what you'll notice on the Moon and on small galaxies like M81 and M82. Filters: a narrower 13nm dual-band on the Draco against the Dwarf 3's wider one, so more sky glow is rejected from a town garden. Calibration: the Draco captures real dark frames on the night. A tripod in the box, which the Dwarf 3 charges £73 for.

What you give up: portability, £840, and certainty. The Dwarf 3 is a known product with two years of firmware behind it, 23 reviews at First Light Optics and a solved list of quirks. The Draco has a spec sheet. Its folded optics are hard to make well at f/3.8, its 1.2-micron phone-class pixels are an unusual choice for deep sky, and its guiding, scheduling and Hubble-palette workflow are all new code.

Verdict: on paper the Draco, comfortably. In practice, wait for review units before spending £1,299, unless you'd rather be first than sure.

Dwarf Draco vs Seestar S50 Pro

This is the comparison that matters, because the Seestar S50 Pro launched two weeks before the Draco and is the best smart telescope you can buy for under £1,000 today. ZWO kept the original S50's 50mm aperture, upgraded the optics to a four-element APO, fitted two 8.3MP 4K cameras (one telephoto, one 63° wide-angle), doubled the battery to 10,000mAh, added NFC and a 128GB store, and put a tripod and hard case in the box. First Light Optics sell it for £899.

The Draco's case against it is aperture and exposure. Ninety millimetres against fifty is 3.2 times the light, and 300-second guided subs against the Seestar's 60-second unguided maximum is a big deal for faint targets. The Draco's remote features, Ethernet, motorised dark cover and filters, and the PhotonLink relay, make it usable as a remote observatory in a way the Seestar isn't. And the Draco's 13nm dual-band filter is narrower than the one in the Seestar range.

The Seestar's case is everything you can verify. It's £400 cheaper. It's 2.8kg against 5.5kg, with a case, so it goes to a dark site without a second thought. ZWO's app is the most polished in the business and the Seestar community on Stargazers Lounge and Facebook is enormous, which is where you go at 11pm when something won't connect. Its plan mode does overnight scheduling, and new features like photometry and background extraction are already shipping. It exists, it's been reviewed, and it works.

Verdict: Seestar S50 Pro if you want to image this autumn. Draco if aperture is the reason you're upgrading and you can wait for the first proper reviews in November.

Dwarf Draco vs Vaonis Vespera II and Unistellar Odyssey

Above £1,000 the Draco's rivals are the established premium brands. The Vaonis Vespera II (£1,398 at FLO) is a 50mm f/5 with an 8.3MP sensor: beautiful industrial design, a superb app with automatic mosaics, and half the Draco's aperture for £100 more. The Vespera III (£2,199) and Vespera Pro II (£2,599) improve the sensor and optics but stay at 50mm. The Unistellar Odyssey (£2,099) is the only other smart telescope near the Draco's aperture, an 85mm f/3.9 with Nikon optics and Unistellar's strong lunar and planetary modes; the Odyssey Pro (£3,699) adds an eyepiece. At the top, the Celestron Origin Mark II (£3,699) is a 152mm f/2.2 RASA that outguns everything here but weighs nearly 19kg.

The Draco's pitch is Odyssey aperture at Vespera II money. Its risk is that Vaonis and Unistellar have shipped several generations of product between them, their apps are mature and their UK dealer support is established, while DwarfLab's reputation has been built on value at the bottom of the market. If the Draco's optics are as good as its spec sheet, it makes the Vespera II hard to justify. If the first reviews find soft corners or noisy subs, the premium brands keep their premium.

Verdict: Draco on paper; Odyssey or Vespera if you need a known quantity today and can afford it.

Nebulae from a UK garden

All four telescopes have a dual-band filter that passes hydrogen-alpha and oxygen-III light and blocks most of the orange sky glow over a British town, which is why any of them will show you the Orion Nebula from a Bortle 7 garden. The differences are how fast and how deep. The Dwarf Mini and Dwarf 3 need an hour or more of stacking for a satisfying Orion or North America Nebula. The Seestar S50 Pro, with twice the Dwarf 3's aperture, gets there in half the time with cleaner detail. The Draco, with 3.2 times the Seestar's light and five-minute guided subs, should make the Rosette, Heart and Veil Nebulae routine rather than a project, and the SHO Edition adds Hubble-palette versions automatically. Whatever you buy, our UK dark sky sites map will do more for your nebula images than any spec on this page.

Verdict: Draco on paper, Seestar S50 Pro today, Dwarf 3 on a budget.

Galaxies, star clusters and the Milky Way

Galaxies are where aperture stops being a spec and becomes the picture. At 30mm and 35mm the Dwarf Mini and Dwarf 3 show Andromeda well and turn M81, M51 and the Leo Triplet into small, soft ovals. The Seestar S50 Pro's 50mm gives them shape. The Draco's 90mm and finer resolution should give them structure: spiral arms on M51, the dust lane in M82, the tidal bridge between M81 and M82 from a dark site. This is the one area where we'd say the Draco's advantage is close to certain, because aperture and resolution are physics rather than firmware.

For the Milky Way it's a different order. All four have a wide-angle camera, but the Draco's is a 1/1.55-inch sensor at 23mm equivalent, close to what a phone's main camera offers, and the Seestar S50 Pro's is an 8.3MP 4K unit with autofocus and live stacking. The Dwarf 3's 2MP wide camera is a finder and timelapse tool by comparison. If you've read our guide to seeing the Milky Way from the UK and want to photograph the arch properly, the Draco and S50 Pro are the two that can.

Verdict: Draco for galaxies; Draco or Seestar S50 Pro for the Milky Way.

The Moon, the Sun and the planets

The Moon is the Draco's showcase. Its 340mm focal length and full-resolution 50MP readout should give a lunar disc with crater detail that no 150mm-focal-length Dwarf can match, and better than the Seestar's 260mm. Our is it a full Moon tonight tool tells you when the terminator is best placed. For the Sun, all four have a solar filter (built-in ND on the Standard Draco, magnetic clip-ons on the others) and a mode that finds and tracks it; read our guide to observing the Sun safely first, because a smart telescope's sensor is as easy to burn as an eye.

Planets are the honest weak spot of every smart telescope here. At 150mm to 340mm of focal length Jupiter and Saturn are small discs; the Draco's finer pixels and 90mm lens will show the belts and rings more clearly than the others, and DwarfLab's samples include the Great Red Spot, but a Sky-Watcher Heritage 130P with a phone adapter will beat all four on Jupiter for £200. If planets are the goal, read our planetary imaging for beginners guide before buying any smart telescope.

Verdict: Draco for the Moon; none of them for planets.

Portability, battery and living with it

The Dwarf Mini (840g) and Dwarf 3 (1.35kg) go in a coat pocket or a small bag with room for a tripod. The Seestar S50 Pro (2.8kg) goes in its hard case and then a rucksack. The Draco (5.5kg) is a one-hand carry from the car to the garden and a two-hand carry across a field. That shapes how you'll use them: the small ones get taken to dark sites on a whim, the Draco gets set up somewhere and left. DwarfLab clearly know this, which is why the Draco has Ethernet, a motorised dark cover, remote filter switching and PhotonLink: it's designed to be run from indoors.

Batteries: the Seestar S50 Pro's seven to nine hours and the Dwarf 3's six will see out a UK winter night; the Draco's five will not, so plan on a USB-C power bank or mains for anything long. None of the four has a built-in dew heater (the Seestar S30 Pro is the only smart telescope that does), so a heater band is a sensible £20 add-on for all of them. Apps: ZWO's is the smoothest, DwarfLab's has improved fast and is now good rather than frustrating, and the Draco's guiding, scheduling and SHO features are the parts to watch in early reviews.

Verdict: Dwarf 3 or Seestar S50 Pro for anyone who travels with their telescope; Draco for a garden or remote setup.

Price and value in the UK

Like for like, with a tripod: Dwarf Mini about £460 with DwarfLab's tripod, Dwarf 3 about £530, Seestar S50 Pro £899 with its own, Draco £1,299 with its own (£1,199 if you pre-order by 14 September). The Draco's SHO Edition is £1,349. So the real ladder is £530, £899, £1,299: each step roughly £400, each step a meaningful jump in aperture (35mm, 50mm, 90mm). That's unusually clean pricing and it makes the choice mostly about budget and how far you want to go.

The Draco is not on sale at First Light Optics yet. FLO stock the Dwarf 3 and Mini and usually list new DwarfLab products at or soon after launch, and buying from a UK dealer gives you UK returns and warranty handling, which matters on a first-generation product. We'd wait for that rather than pre-ordering from overseas. Our Seestar S50 vs Dwarf 3 comparison covers the original S50 at £539 if £899 is too much for the Pro.

Which should you buy?

Buy the Dwarf 3 if you're starting out, £459 plus a tripod is the budget, and you want to be imaging Orion by November. It's the best-value smart telescope on sale and the same app as the Draco if you upgrade later.

Buy the Seestar S50 Pro if you can spend £899 and want the most capable smart telescope you can hold today, with the best app, a case, a tripod and a huge community behind it.

Pre-order the Draco if you already own a Dwarf 3 or Seestar and have run out of aperture, you want galaxies with structure and five-minute subs, you're happy with 5.5kg in a fixed spot, and you accept that you'll be among the first to find out whether it lives up to the spec sheet. Standard Edition unless Hubble-palette nebulae are the whole point.

Wait if you're torn between the S50 Pro and the Draco. Review units land in November; we'll update this page and our Draco guide the week they do, and FLO should have it in stock by then.