ZWO AM5 Mount Review

You probably clicked on this v/blog to hear my thoughts on the ZWO AM5 – the latest Harmonic Drive Mount from ZWO. After having used it for a couple of sessions, I’m very impressed by the ZWO AM5 mount. It is very lightweight, doesn’t require any counterweight, and guides well below 1 arcsecond, with PHD2 multi-star guiding set at one second. The ASI ASCOM driver works perfectly and connects the AM5 to your favorite astrophotography software. As it is one of the cheapest harmonic drive mounts available at this point in time, I’m sure the ZWO AM5 will be loved by many astrophotographers who are looking forward to avoiding chronic back pain while still getting round stars.

In this v/blog, I’ll share my first impressions of the ZWO AM5 I got in January 2023 from the nice people at ZWO. I didn’t receive any instructions or money to do this review, so I’m giving you my honest opinion. During the very cloudy winter in northwestern Europe, I did find a handful of clear nights to test this mount. So let me tell you all about my first experiences and thoughts about the ZWO AM5. But before I do so, I also want to add some background as to why I became intrigued by harmonic drive mounts like the AM5 after having used some good old German equatorial mounts like the Celestron AVX and the SkyWatcher EQ6-R Pro for years. I think that’s useful because many folks like me are on the fence about staying true to their classic GEMs versus joining the Harmonic Drive Mount revolution.

Harmonic Drive Mounts – the new revolution?

Two thoughts came to my mind when I heard about the fact that ZWO was launching its AM5 mount back in 2022. First, isn’t ZWO the company that helped to completely destroy the CCD camera market by introducing innovative and affordable CMOS cameras for astrophotography with high quantum efficiencies and low read noise? Well, yes. So my second thought was, if this company launches a new mount based on harmonic drive technology, will that mean the end of the German equatorial mount business, just like the good old CCD camera business? It surely must have come as a shocker for brands like SkyWatcher and Celestron when ZWO announced their first harmonic drive mount.

ZWO is not the only company that’s launching these new harmonic drive mounts. Other brands like iOptron, Pegasus Astro, Rainbow Astro, and Sharpstar are also jumping on the harmonic drive mount wagon by launching their own mounts. Intrigued as I was by this, I made an overview v/blog about all these brand-new harmonic drive mounts. One of the things that stood out in that overview video was that the ZWO AM5 was one of the cheapest harmonic drive mounts available on the astromarket for about 2000 dollars. And that’s important because there is a big difference when comparing the potential harmonic drive mount revolution to the CMOS Astro camera revolution back in 2015. And that is, CMOS cameras were way cheaper than CCD cameras, whereas harmonic drive mounts are generally more expensive than German equatorial mounts in the same category. So if you are considering swapping your good old German equatorial mount for a more expensive harmonic drive mount, you want to know what the cheapest one is on the market, and if that mount can actually replace your German equatorial mount. The ZWO AM5 is that mount, so let me tell you all about it.

Setup and Ease of Use

My AM5 mount arrived in January under cloudy skies. The mount arrived in a nice suitcase that’s about 30x30x18 cm, or as my American friends would say; 12x12x8 inches. As I’m used to the metric system I’ll mention centimeters and kilograms, and I hope you have that metric-to-imperial calculator ready for use. The ZWO AM5 mount head is super lightweight as it only weighs five and a half kilograms. That’s about 3 times lighter than my good old SkyWatcher EQ6-R Pro mount. I was happy to see that I could take the whole AM5 mount with me on my Dutch bicycle, instead of slowly developing chronic back pain when dragging my heavy EQ6-R pro mount to my backyard.

What makes it really interesting is that the AM5 is designed to carry a payload of up to 13 kilograms without using any counterweight, and up to 20 kg with a counterweight attached. That’s beyond the maximum payload capacity of most beginner-level astrophotography mounts like the popular Celestron AVX or the SkyWatcher HEQ5 (14 kg), and about equal to the popular SkyWatcher EQ6-R Pro which can carry up to 20 kg. Now, these are all figures are mentioned by vendors as part of the mount specifications, but it doesn’t tell us much about real live performances. The most important thing about astrophotography mounts is their ability to accurately guide your telescope so you can take those multi-minute exposures of deep-sky objects. I tested my AM5 using two setups; my 480mm apochromatic refractor telescope with my camera, filter wheel, and guide camera attached, and my Celestron Edge HD 8″ with the same extras and a .7 reducer – without using any counterweight.

Guiding

I know most folks looking to get an AM5 are experienced astrophotographers and thus interested in the guiding figures I got using both telescopes across the few clear nights we had in Europe during this winter. So let me tell you right away that I was very happy with my first tests. Using both setups across a couple of nights, my tracking was well below 1 arcsecond as promised by ZWO. RA and DEC were around .5 to .7 arcseconds using PHD2 with multi-star guiding, at a 1-second interval. So, I got my round stars, even when imaging at about 1500mm focal length which is pretty freaking awesome. Here’s a stacked grayscale picture of 25 x 5-minute exposures of the x-mas tree nebula with my TS APO 80/480mm refractor, using my ZWO ASI2600MM Pro with a Ha 7nm filter.

Light as a feather

Let’s take a step back and talk about the optional TC40 carbon fiber tripod that comes with the AM5 for an extra $350. That tripod only weighs 2.3 kg. The tripod is 50cm long when it’s folded and can be extended to about 80cm. The maximum extension is still quite close to the ground as compared to some of the tripods that come with German Equatorial Mounts like the EQ6-R Pro. At the same time, I felt like the reduced length of the legs offers more stability to the rig. ZWO does offer an optional pier if you want to extend the height of the tripod which I didn’t get. Let me just pause here and recognize that the mount and tripod combined only weigh about 8 kg. If I compare that to my EQ6R-Pro mount, which does need counterweights, that setup is about 4 times heavier as compared to this AM5. I’m appreciating this fact more and more as I get older and more fragile. I’m 46 years old now, and this might be the mount I need, to keep on doing astrophotography until I die. I’ll be completely honest, it did feel kinda strange when putting my Celestron Edge HD telescope with all the extra stuff on that lightweight AM5 mount, but it passed the test with flying colors.

Remote Controlling the ZWO AM5 Mount

You can control that ZWO AM5 mount in four different ways with; (1) a hand controller, (2) your smartphone by using the ASI mount App; (3) your PC/Laptop using an ASCOM driver, and (4) the ASIAIR. I have a step-by-step tutorial video that explains in detail how to control the mount using the first three options. I’m planning a separate v/blog on the ASIAIR and the AM5 as this is a little more complex and geared toward deep-sky astrophotography. I have to say that I was rather impressed by the ASI Mount APP!

For the first nights of testing, I used the ASCOM driver (and ASCOM platform) with my favorite astrophotography software like Sharpcap, PHD2, and Sequence Generator Pro (nope, still not a NINA user :-)). Using ASCOM, the mount had no problem connecting to different astrophotography software, and plate-solving in SGP worked very well, with the ZWO AM5 precisely slewing to the areas in the night sky. It was usually within 2 degrees of the target, and plate-solving software puts your deep-sky object exactly in the center of your field of view. As already mentioned, tracking was well below 1 arcsecond – on average about .5 to .7 in RA and about .5 in DEC – across various imaging nights, using various telescopes like my TS APO 80/480MM APO refractor, and my Celestron Edge HD 8″. Interestingly, guiding results were very similar when using either a 480mm focal length up to 1500mm with the Edge HD and a .7 reducer. During the day, I decided to take a look at the Sun with my TS 80/480MM APO and the Daystar Quark Chromosphere, using the ASIAIR APP over WiFi to slew the mount to the Sun. I was impressed by the numerous options the ASIMOUNT APP had to offer, as discussed in this v/blog and the mount had no trouble finding the Sun while it was connected to my smartphone. The ASIMOUNT APP doesn’t include plate-solving (yet), but it is a great and easy-to-use tool to control the mount without the need for any extra device or cable connection. Do take into account that you have to connect the hand controller to use the ASIMOUNT APP – because the hand controller sends the WiFi signal.

SETUP and polar alignment is easy

Setting up the mount is very easy. I was able to connect the AM5 to the TC40 by installing a head plate on the AM5 that locks the mount to the tripod. The mount is already set to equatorial mode from 0 to 60 degrees latitude, but it can be adjusted to higher latitudes if needed. As I’m at 52 degrees latitude, I simply loosened the tension grips and used the altitude adjustment to put the mount at 52 degrees latitude and retightened the tension grips. Likewise, it is easy to adjust the mount in azimuth. You can simply loosen the azimuth lock and rotate the azimuth knobs to polar align the mount.

I do need to mention that there isn’t any polar scope that comes with the mount for polar alignment. For me personally, that’s not an issue as I’m connecting the AM5 via a USB cable to my mini PC. I then use the view of my primary camera to polar align my mount using the polar alignment assistant in sharpcap. I saw some videos of people complaining about the altitude and azimuth adjustment when doing polar alignment, but I didn’t experience this to be a big issue. You do need to take care and make very small adjustments to polar align your telescope, but I definitely experienced far worse with other equatorial mounts. The AM5 also comes with an old-fashioned hand controller which can only be used to move the telescope around, initiate tracking, or put the mount back into the home position. That is rather basic as compared to the hand controllers you’ll get when buying equatorial mounts, but let’s be honest. Most astrophotographers remotely control their mount over USB using astrophotography software like SGpro, NINA, or control their mount with devices like the ASIAIR. The AM5 is definitely meant for people who want to automate their astrophotography. What’s also nice is that the mount is very quite when slewing to targets, which is very different to some of the beginner mounts like the Celestron AVX which sounds like a coffee grinder. The mount also has a separate guideport that works fine. I never use that guideport as I always connect my guide camera directly via USB to PHD2, and I’m using the ZWO ASCOM driver to send guiding pulses from PHD2 to the ZWO AM5. So isn’t there anything I don’t like about the mount? Well, I did accidentally kick the tripod of the telescope after one of the polar alignment procedures, and the mount immediately moved because it is so lightweight. So that caused me to redo my polar alignment. But apart from this, I’m really impressed by the performance of the AM5.

Final thoughts

So how do I feel about this mount, and how does it compete against other mounts? Well, I can honestly say that I didn’t have so much fun with a mount for years. I’ve put this lightweight mount on my rooftop using only a ladder to look at the venus Jupiter conjunction that was low in the western sky. That’s something I’d never do with my heavier German equatorial mount. The ASCOM driver works like a charm and enabled me to connect the mount to all the astrophotography software I like. And the guiding results were well below 1 arcsecond using different telescopes from 500mm up to 1500mm focal length. Also, I found the setup and polar alignment procedure of this mount to be very easy.

Price-wise, the ZWO AM5 is one of the cheaper harmonic drive mounts on the astrophotography market today. The only competition within the harmonic drive mount market seems to come from iOptron with their HEM27 and HAE29 which I didn’t test yet. Still, at about $2350 including the tripod, the price is a bit beyond popular german equatorial mounts like the skywatcher EQ6-R Pro or the iOptron CEM40 which can handle the same payload. For that extra price, you’ll get an easy-to-use mount that is about two to four times lighter than the classic german equatorial mounts, you don’t have to mess around with counterweights, and you can easily take this mount with you on a holiday trip with your friends or family as it doesn’t take up much space. Harmonic drive mounts like the ZWO AM5 are still pretty new, I’m very curious to see what the long-term reliability of these mounts will be.

All in all, after having tested this mount, I do think I will buy it and I’m curious to find out if I’m going to prefer using my ZWO AM5 over my good old SkyWatcher EQ6R Pro has served me very well in the past. I’ll definitely make an update video after six months to give you a long-term test review. That’s all I got folks, let me know what your experiences are with this mount, and clear skies!

The ZWO AM5 mount is available at Agena (USA/WW), High Point Scientific (USA/WW), and Astroshop (EU/WW).