[jerome-jh]

I have a 4.5" Dobson. It is quite cheap even with an additional set of eyepiece that is almost mandatory. Our use case is occasional observation while on holidays and weekends, when space in the car is counted. You can leave kids touch it and on good nights reach magnification levels where pursuit starts being painful. Around 11-12PM kids are asleep, cold, bored and you have observed every visible planets. You can stay later searching for deep sky objects: it is difficult and not very impressive but you'll be quite happy when you find one for sure (often you'll doubt). I would say: perfect instrument for the setting I describe. Maybe binoculars would be great too, have not tried.