Since I am trekker and an Astrophotographer, heavy trackers wasn't really my thing from the very start, but I had always dreamt of taking tracked shots. MSM essentially fulfilled my that dream! A perfect tracker to take in during long treks with tent and other camping stuffs. It fits perfectly in my bag pack and takes up little space and the weight is also very less. I have been using the tracker for three years now, and complete satisfaction would be an understatement. The milkyway shot which I have attached, taken in a Bortle 2 sky of Himachal Pradesh, India is still my best shot till date, and has been nominated and featured in several international astronomical medium. The Orion shot was taken from my roof top, and I live in Bortle 9 city. Obviously I have stacked multiple images for both of the shots, but still even the single tracked exposures can give you a lot of data. Also if you use a lot of timelapses in your video(astro or non astro), MSM tracker doubles as rotator as well, which essentially means you will get a moving timelapse. Let me chart out pros and cons of this device, for you decide whether you should buy it or not.
Pros :
1. Portable, Light weight, small
2. Very easy to setup, for beginners, contrary to the other trackers which can be extremely difficult to set up for a novice photographer
3. It can used for not only widescape Astrophotography but also Deepsky and Deepscape as well.
4. Cheaper than traditional trackers
5. Comes with a lot of add ons.
6. Extremely easy to polar align, with a bit of practice it can take as quick as 30 seconds.
Cons :
1. Since it's a very small tracker, you can not use an extremely long focal length lens i.e. over 300mm(Although 250mm gives you the best results)
2. Since the tracker is light weight you can not use an extremely heavy lens with it.
3. Even though it is battery powered, it is manual, in the sense of, it can't be used with an computer like other trackers, and you have to Polar align it manually.
4. The shape of the tracker is a bit boxy although the newer "NOMAD" version has fixed the issue.
Final verdict : Whether If you are beginner or pro in Astrophotography, you should go for this variant or the newer NOMAD version blindly, since the NOMAD version improved a lot of aspects of the cons I have mentioned above, but keep in mind, you will loose the Rotator feature.
If you are interested to check out some photos taken with this tracker, you can head out to my Instagram : www.instagram.com/nomadic_spectacles/
Exif of the images which are attached :
The one with Orion :
Total Exposure Time : 1 hour (10 sec x 360)
ISO 800 f/5.6 @200mm
Flat, Dark, Bias frames: 50 x 3
Sony A7ii + Tamron 28-200
The one with the Milkyway :
Milky Way :
2 Minutes f/2.2 ISO 1000 50mm (x15)
Foreground :
5 minutes f/3.5 ISO 400 50mm (Single)
Sony A7ii + Sony 50mm