Every retreat ends the same way: someone corners us at the campfire and asks which telescope to buy. The honest answer fits in three sentences, but nobody believes it until they have spent a weekend drowning in forum threads. So here it is in writing.
The telescope you will use beats the telescope you admire
A 70mm refractor that lives by the back door gets pointed at the sky two hundred nights a year. A 12-inch reflector that needs twenty minutes of assembly gets used twice and sold in the spring. Weight and setup time are the specs that actually predict how much sky you will see, and they never headline the product page.
The mount matters more than the glass
A modest tube on a steady mount shows you crisp, still planets. A big tube on a wobbly mount shows you a jitter that never settles. If your budget forces a choice, put the money under the telescope, not inside it.
Skip the department store bundle
Anything advertised by magnification is aimed at gift buyers, not sky watchers. Claims like 600x on a 60mm tube are technically true and practically useless. A used telescope from an astronomy classifieds board, bought with one experienced friend along, beats any boxed kit at the same price.
When guests follow this advice, the same thing happens every time: within a month they know the sky well enough to understand the spec sheets, and their second telescope, if they ever want one, chooses itself.