DWARFLAB Dwarf 3 Review: The Most Portable Smart Telescope Tested

This Dwarf 3 telescope review is for the person tempted by a scope small enough to live in a backpack, but who wants to know what it will actually show from a normal British garden before spending real money. The DWARFLAB Dwarf 3 is the most portable smart telescope worth taking seriously, and it does far more than its size suggests. It also has clear limits, and the honest picture matters more than the marketing.

Smart telescopes like this one skip the eyepiece entirely. You set the unit down, connect your phone, pick a target, and the scope finds it, tracks it and stacks a live image on your screen. If that idea is new to you, start with our explainer on smart telescopes, then come back for the detail on this one.

What the Dwarf 3 is

The Dwarf 3 is a compact cube that weighs under 1.5kg, roughly the size of a small hardback book, with a periscope-style dual-lens system inside. It uses a Sony IMX678 Starvis 2 sensor, an 8.3-megapixel chip with small 2-micron pixels that is well regarded for low-light astro work. The main telephoto lens has a 35mm aperture and a 150mm focal length, which on this small sensor gives a reach roughly equivalent to a 700mm-plus lens on a full-frame camera. A separate wide-angle lens handles daytime shots, timelapses and nightscapes.

Two things set it apart from rivals its size. First, the built-in filters, including a dual-band light-pollution filter that cuts the orange glow of a town or city sky and pulls out nebula detail you would otherwise lose. Second, the versatility: because of the wide lens it is a genuinely usable daytime camera for wildlife and landscapes, not only a night-sky device.

What you actually see with it

Set your expectations correctly and the Dwarf 3 is a delight. On deep-sky targets it shines: large nebulae like Orion, the North America Nebula and the Andromeda Galaxy build up on screen over a few minutes of stacking, and the light-pollution filter means you get a genuine result even from a suburban garden. The Moon is sharp and detailed. Bright star clusters look excellent.

The Go-To and tracking are the real story. In testing it centres deep-sky targets reliably, plate-solving against the star field rather than relying on a perfect setup, so you spend your time looking at results instead of fighting alignment. Image quality is a clear step up from the older Dwarf II, and the extra focal length helps on almost every popular target.

Where it disappoints is planets. The focal length and aperture are simply too short to show Jupiter or Saturn as anything more than a small bright blob with a hint of shape. If planets are your priority, this is the wrong tool, and a traditional scope on a decent mount will beat it for a similar outlay. We cover that trade-off in smart telescope vs traditional telescope.

Living with it

The workflow is genuinely beginner-friendly. There is no polar alignment ritual and no star charts to memorise. You do need a phone or tablet, a bit of patience while frames stack, and realistic dark-sky expectations: no filter turns a streetlight-flooded garden into a mountain-top view, but the Dwarf 3 gets closer than anything else this small. Battery life is enough for an evening session, and it recharges over USB-C like a phone.

For astrophotography specifically, the equatorial mode and mosaic stitching let you build larger, longer-exposure images than the point-and-shoot mode, which is where enthusiasts get the most out of it over time. It rewards learning without demanding it up front.

Who it suits, and who should look elsewhere

The Dwarf 3 is the right buy if portability matters to you, if you want one device that does night sky and daytime, and if your main targets are the Moon, nebulae, galaxies and clusters. It is ideal for a beginner who wants results on the first night and room to grow into more advanced imaging later.

Look elsewhere if you mainly want to see the planets, or if you want to physically look through an eyepiece rather than at a screen. In those cases a beginner Dobsonian or refractor makes more sense. The obvious rival to weigh up is the Seestar; see our Seestar S50 review and our roundup of the best smart telescope in the UK for the head-to-head. For full specifications, DWARFLAB publishes them on the official Dwarf 3 page.

Frequently asked questions

Is the Dwarf 3 good for beginners? Yes. It is one of the easiest ways into astrophotography because there is no manual alignment. You pick a target in the app and the scope finds and tracks it for you, stacking a live image on your phone. A beginner can get a real picture of a nebula on the first clear night.

Can the Dwarf 3 photograph planets? Not well. Its 150mm focal length and 35mm aperture are designed for wide deep-sky targets, so planets appear as small bright blobs rather than detailed discs. For planetary viewing, a traditional telescope with a long focal length is a far better choice.

Does the Dwarf 3 work in a light-polluted garden? Yes, better than most scopes its size, thanks to a built-in dual-band light-pollution filter that suppresses artificial glow and lifts nebula detail. It will not match a dark-sky site, but it produces usable deep-sky images from suburban and even urban gardens.

How is the Dwarf 3 different from the Seestar S50? The Dwarf 3 is smaller, doubles as a daytime camera with its wide-angle lens, and has built-in filters, while the Seestar S50 has a longer focal length that some prefer for framing. Both are excellent beginner smart telescopes; the choice comes down to portability and versatility versus reach.

Do I need a dark sky to use it? No, but darker is always better. The filters let you image nebulae from a town, and the Moon and bright clusters look good almost anywhere. For the faintest galaxies and the best detail, a trip to a darker site still pays off.