DwarfLab Dwarf 3 smart telescope review

Do you need a smart telescope? You do if you fancy taking images of deep-sky objects like galaxies, star clusters and nebulae, but live in a light-polluted town or city. Cue the Dwarf 3 (£418 / $520), a smart telescope that is exceptionally small. Weighing a mere 1.3 kg / 2.87lbs, it’s light and narrow and, crucially, able to fit into a camera bag.

Its big trick is to take short exposures of “faint fuzzies” such as galaxies, nebulae and globular clusters and stack them in real-time, improving them with every additional image. It can also shoot the moon and the sun, the latter thanks to a solar filter shaped like a pair of solar eclipse glasses that snap into place across the Dwarf 3’s two lenses — one a 3.4mm wide-angle (principally for finding objects) and one a 35mm zoom.

As well as being able to image celestial objects, Dwarf 3 can take photos and videos of the daytime world, with birds and other animals the perfect targets. Is Dwarf 3 one of the best smart telescopes or one of the best budget telescopes? Here’s why it’s a great addition to the camera backpack of any landscape photographer who often finds themself out in twilight or night.

DwarfLabs Dwarf 3: Specifications

DwarfLab Dwarf 3: Price

Dwarf 3 does have a slight price problem. It costs $599 / £492 / AU$811, which may seem like a relative bargain — particularly when compared to high-profile and expensive smart telescopes like the Unistellar Odyssey and Vaonis Vespera 2 — but the smart telescope market is changing so fast.

Dwarflab’s main competitor in this entry-level smart telescope market is ZWO, which recently followed up its larger ZWO Seestar S50 with the smaller Seestar S30, a very similar product to the Dwarf 3, and for a considerably more affordable $399 / £419 / AU$699. Dwarf 3’s telescope does have a slightly larger aperture than the Seestar S30, but it doesn’t come with a tripod. That’s a shame, though it’s not likely to most photographers. It has a 1/4-inch tripod thread and can be put on a tabletop tripod if placed somewhere with a big-sky view.

DwarfLab Dwarf 3: Design & Handling

The Dwarf 3 is tiny, but not especially lightweight. At 2.87lb/1.3 kg, in the hand, it feels like the equivalent of holding a heavy wide-angle lens. It may be heavier in your camera backpack than you might like, but it’s so narrow it fits easily alongside other equipment. Although when used to scan the heavens and take deep-sky images, it is much easier on a tall tripod, with as few obstacles in its way as possible, Dwarf 3 is so small it could even be mounted on a simple tripod support arm alongside a DLSR or mirrorless camera. That’s particularly true if it’s used to shoot the sun or moon or to take video.

The build quality is excellent, and a high-grade solar filter is also supplied. Arranged like a pair of eclipse glasses to protect both the wide-angle and telephoto lens, it’s got an impressive magnetic design, but it would be nice if there were a proper protective case for them instead of the drawstring bag, which doesn’t add much protection.

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DwarfLab Dwarf 3: Performance

In use, the Dwarf 3 is mostly impressive. Although connectivity issues between the smartphone and telescope dogged early review sessions, once the link was made, the set-up was straightforward. For shooting the sun and moon, I found the dual-lens system helpful, with the wide-angle lens easy to move manually into position — using a virtual joystick in the app — before selecting “sun track” or “moon track” to keep it in the field of view.

For deep sky objects at night, the app's built-in sky atlas is useful for selecting targets, though before it can find them, Dwarf 3 has to align with the stars. Once done, it shows the target — usually looking very dim and indistinct, before getting to work taking and stacking long exposure images, with presets, defaults and its built-in filters producing very impressive results. With its real-time stacking and AI-powered noise reduction, it cleverly mitigates light pollution to capture faint nebulae including the bright Orion Nebula (M42) and the Horsehead Nebula.

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There’s a handy “recommended” list of objects to image, though you do need to ensure you have a clear view of as much of the sky as possible to rely on that (or, better still, learn the night sky so you’ll instinctively know what’s within reach). At any point within the image process, you can see the name of the target, the shutter speed, gain, and how many separate images have been taken.

For galaxies and nebulae, the longer you leave Dwarf 3 alone, the better the composite image. To that end, it’s also important to take dark frames, which the app does prompt you to do.

You could leave it on default mode and enjoy the Dwarf 3 perfectly, well, but astrophotographers who want to go deeper can extract the image files as FITS and indulge in manual stacking and post-processing. There’s also a new EQ mode that enables the Dwarf 3 to ape an (expensive) equatorial mount. That necessitates aligning the telescope with Dwarf 3, with the principal advantage being longer exposures.

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DwarfLab Dwarf 3: Verdict

Compact and well-built, the Dwarf 3 smart telescope is a great tool for all kinds of photographers and wannabe astrophotographers. It makes deep-sky astrophotography easy and, just as importantly, it’s small and portable enough to be taken to the very darkest night skies as an afterthought in a camera backpack. However, while it impresses on both ease of use and image processing, as well as advanced manual options, it faces stiff competition from rivals, which offer similar features at a lower price, something not helped by its lack of a tripod.

Alternatives

ZWO SeeStar S30: A similarly small smart telescope that’s just as portable and easy to use, but available at a significantly smaller price.

Vaonis Vespera 2: A high-end smart telescope with a 50mm aperture telescope, but around double the price.