Comments by "Lepi Doptera" (@lepidoptera9337) on "Astrobiscuit" channel.

For somebody who lives in the city that's absolutely pointless. One can't make any use of a "real scope" under skies illuminated by 10MW of nuclear power. These "toy" telescopes and good binoculars are giving the maximum amount of joy, though. They can be set up in seconds to minutes and they reveal the few objects that can be seen really well perfectly fine. It's an entirely different story for somebody who (still) has access to really dark skies. In that case (assuming continued interest and a loving wife or husband who is willing to give up several vacations in Bali...) I would shoot for the biggest aperture/best quality one's money can buy, too.
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I have seen the difference between reflectors and refractors (disclaimer - not my own but those of people who are really into it) and, like it or not, the refractor wins and not by a small margin in my opinion as far as visual quality is concerned. Planetary photography requires large focal length, anyway, and the four or five planets that can be resolved in a small instrument (smaller than Hubble that is) are plenty bright even with small apertures. $400 buys a 4" achromatic refractor if I am not mistaken, so under ideal seeing you are trading in half of the theoretical resolution. In practice it might be a little less than that because of the better optical quality of the refractor (no central mirror occlusion). What you should really do, if you can, is to look through somebody else's telescope first to get an idea of what you can expect to see. What can be photographed at what price point can be easily assessed from the thousands of high quality astrophotographs that are on the internet now. If, on the other hand, you want deep space, then quality goes out the window and aperture is the only relevant parameter. Buy the largest mirror you can. That's just physics talking.
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