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Dwarflabs Dwarf Mini Telescope: Test/Review

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Published on: 29-11-2025 / Modified: 01-12-2025
It’s been 2 or 3 years since Dwarflab, Seestar and Vaonis embarked on the adventure of consumer electronic telescopes, and it has changed everything. Telescopes used to be complicated instruments to handle and set up, and you also needed a huge amount of patience to do any photography. I’ve been through that myself, I still have my “old” 750 mm telescope but it’s now just a decorative object because I don’t have time to use it.

For better or worse, we live in a society where patience is no longer the norm and everything has to be fast. These three brands understood this very well when they designed products that are simple to use and can produce results quite quickly without much effort. They are all controlled by an app and just a few taps are enough to start them up and begin photographing the sky.

This Dwarf Mini is the 5th electronic telescope I’ve tested, I’ve also tested the Dwarf 2 and Dwarf 3 from the same brand. This new Dwarf Mini moves away from its predecessors by opting for a separate adjustable tube and a very small form factor. All I can do now is cross my fingers for a clear sky as soon as possible so I can test it!

Where to buy?

The Dwarf Mini is available for pre-order on the official website for £399:
Dwarf Mini / Dwarflabs.com

Unboxing

This telescope really lives up to its name, it’s the smallest telescope I’ve had the opportunity to test so far. It’s so small that the postman was able to drop it directly into my mailbox. It weighs just 840 grams, so it’s no surprise that the packaging is so small as well.

The box contains the telescope, a charging cable (USB type C), a manual, a solar filter and a soft cloth to clean the optics.



I often write that packaging is useless, but it often gives you an idea of the maturity of the product and of the brand selling it. This is not Dwarflabs’ first telescope and you can tell. This Dwarf Mini has clearly become a mass-market product and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it on the shelves of physical stores.

Timeline

28/11/2025: I received the telescope, I’ll be able to start the test but the progress of this review will strongly depend on the weather and the sky conditions. So I don’t know how long it will take me to finish this test.

Overview

As I wrote in the introduction, the form factor has completely changed. The previous models used a horizontal rotating tube mounted on a rotating base. This Dwarf Mini has switched to a vertical tube, as was already the case with some competitors. This type of configuration should in principle allow for a longer focal length, but if I rely on the specifications on the official website, that doesn’t seem to be the case. I will have the opportunity to verify this as soon as the sky clears.

Here is an overview of the 3 Dwarf telescopes I’ve tested:
This new model has nothing to do with the previous ones and if it weren’t for the Dwarflabs logo, you could easily think it was a telescope from another brand. I don’t know if this gives us any clue about the next models or if it’s just an experiment; the format seems more appropriate to me but I’ll see how it goes in real use.


The tube can be tilted up to the vertical, and even a few degrees beyond, but to make it truly panoramic you need to use the rotating base. The previous models were limited in their movement, this one can rotate 360° without any problem.

To charge the telescope, you just have to plug it into any USB charger. The cable is included in the box but the charger is not. The USB port is used to charge the telescope but also to access its internal memory to retrieve the files it has produced. This is not mandatory because you can retrieve the files from the app, but if you want to get the raw files you can do it through the USB port.

To turn the telescope on, just press the big button. When the button is surrounded by green, it’s ready to connect to your phone. The other indicators below show how much battery you have left. Since it can be connected via USB, you can also hook up a power bank to increase its battery life.

The base rotates fully and is almost silent, so you won’t wake your neighbours if you decide to spend the night outside observing the stars.

Setup

Setting up a telescope of this kind doesn’t require any technical expertise, you just have to follow the instructions in the app.

Here are the steps you need to follow:

1. Download the Dwarflabs app from the Play Store or the Apple Store
2. Launch the app and from the home screen choose “Connect”
3. Accept any permissions requested by the app; location is very important here because it will allow the telescope to determine where it is relative to the sky. You need to grant permissions for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS and location.
4. The app will search for your telescope, just make sure the light around the power button is green. In principle, the app should find the telescope immediately.
5. The app will connect to the telescope and here you need to understand the basic principle because it will affect how you use your phone. The connection between your phone and the telescope is made via Wi-Fi, which means you will no longer be connected to your home Wi-Fi network. Your phone will use its 4G/5G connection to access the internet and possibly perform updates. This is normal behaviour, it’s the same for all telescopes of this kind.
6. You will probably have to update the telescope and activate it
7. After the update, the telescope will need to restart and once this is done, you can start using it.

App

The app is the heart of the product because without it you can’t do anything. The Dwarflabs app has evolved a lot since the last version; it offers automatic observation modes for beginners but also lets you change settings to better exploit the telescope’s capabilities.

From the home screen you have two options for using the Dwarf Mini:

1. You tap on the telescope icon and from there you enter a control interface that lets you manually steer the telescope, take photos and record videos. If you’ve never used this kind of product, I recommend starting with the second option.
2. You tap on the Atlas icon at the bottom of the screen. The app will probably ask you to update the catalog before you can start. Once that’s done, you have at your disposal a catalog of celestial objects to observe, either by selecting them from a list or by browsing the sky on your phone. In both cases, once you’ve made your choice, you use the “go to” function and the telescope will automatically move to the selected object and start observing.

If you choose option 2, you are pointing at the sky blindly, which means that the object in question may not be visible from your position. You’ll notice this quite quickly if your screen remains black; in that case you’ll have to choose another object.

Observing the sun

Observing the sun is fairly easy. The hardest part is actually getting sunshine, at least in Belgium. Don't forget to install the solar filter before starting your session, otherwise you will burn your telescope.

The first step is to select the sun in the Atlas; the telescope will ask you to point it at the sun manually. This isn't too complicated given how bright it is. Once you have the sun in your sights, you can activate the tracking function and the telescope will easily compensate for the Earth's movement. The tracking here is as good as on the other two models.

You can either take photos or videos. Videos of the sun are not really interesting because nothing happens. You won't see solar flares or anything like that. Photos, on the other hand, are more interesting because you can observe sunspots, as in the examples below. The sun is not the most exciting subject to use this telescope for, but it works and allows you to familiarise yourself with the telescope. In broad daylight, you have plenty of time to try out all the features, whereas in the middle of the night it will always be a little more complicated.

Observing the moon

You take advantage of the opportunity to make use of the open air for additional photos in advance of your new arrival. It is fair to point out the manipulation of the telescope because of the accuracy of the calibration. During the day, the problem is still visible. The mise au point et le suivie fonctionne assez bien, il suffiit de quelques second pour cadre la lune et continue à la suivre. The level of detail is important because of the Dwarf 3, it is not visible until the light is displayed and when viewed on zoom, it is visible during the installation of the contours.



You can use the video function according to the current situation:

The conditions for testing the timelapse are the mêmes:

And plan large and with the luminosity of the light, the level of the exhibition is correct and the quality of the video as well. If you adapt the luminosity pour me into the center of the light, then continue with the mount and turn it into a granular image.

Observing the planets

Not tested yet, but I should point out that this telescope is not designed to observe planets, its focal length is too short. The planets will barely look bigger than stars and you won’t see much detail.

Deep-sky observation

Update 12/16/25
I'm finally seeing stars for the first time since I got the telescope, but there's a veil of clouds, so the conditions aren't ideal. However, you'll see that the result is quite surprising for such a small telescope.

First target: M42
This is by far the easiest target for me, and it's a magnificent celestial object. While pointing it, I noticed a difference compared to other Dwarf telescopes. Calibration is clearly performed with each new target, whereas the Dwarf 3 only did it once per session. The Dwarf Mini is also slower to react than the Dwarf 3.

The first step is therefore to automatically point at the object using the Atlas feature of the application:


After calibration, this pointing is done automatically and the telescope enters M42 tracking mode. The tracking is flawless. I can then begin the image capture.

From the very first image, M42 appears on the screen—that's what I call instant gratification, and the result is already quite interesting. The image is very noisy, and the details aren't yet visible, but it's only the first image of a stack, so that's perfectly normal.

After 33 images, the photo is already significantly more detailed, and I'm stopping the tracking because M42 is about to pass behind my neighbor's rooftop. The telescope will stack the images for you and store the result in the application's gallery. There's a major new feature here: you have the option to send your photo to Dwarflabs so it can be enhanced by their AI. Seestar offers a similar service, but without requiring account creation. I can understand why Dwarflabs would want your email address, but creating an account might not have been the best approach. Anyway, I sent the photo to Dwarf Labs and here's the result without any effort:


Wow, it's really not bad at all, and it only took about twenty seconds. The photo is more detailed, the colors are more vibrant, and the noise has almost completely disappeared. I could stop there; that's probably what most users will do, but I wanted to try to do better.

My turn to play around with my editing tools (Adobe suite):
If I had dentures, they probably would have fallen out when I saw this photo. The result is simply sublime!

Second target: Barnard 33, or the Horsehead Nebula. I repeat the same process, automatically pointing at Barnard 33, and start the capture. The sky was starting to cloud over, and here, however, there was no way to see the Horsehead Nebula in the first image, but it's not a big deal. I let the telescope do its work and came back to see it after 87 images.

As with M42, Barnard 33 is clearly visible and the image is also very noisy, but nothing beyond repair. I sent the stack to Dwarf Labs and here's what I got:

The result is less spectacular than for M42, but the conditions were less favorable. However, I still find it quite acceptable and I see potential for bringing out more detail. Here's what it looks like after processing:

I probably overdid it with the red, but the result is still really interesting.

I had to stop my session at this point because of the cloud cover, but I'm honestly very surprised by this little telescope. I was expecting lower optical quality than the Dwarf 3, and that's indeed the case, but the difference...

Battery life

Not tested yet

Connectivity

Not tested yet

Conclusion/Review

Not finished yet

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