Excerpt from Astronomy Now review by Ninian Boyle

The lens itself is a thing of beauty. It is an apochromatic doublet lens of 600mm, giving a focal ratio of f/7. Apochromats are designed to eliminate all false colours from the image. There are many such telescopes that do this with greater or lesser success; the TV-85 does it superlatively. On a bright near full Moon, I could detect no false colour whatsoever. Stars were absolutely pin-sharp and the sense of being in space when looking through a low power, wideangle eyepiece is astonishing.

Excerpt from Living Bird article by Dr. Ken Rosenberg, director of conservation science at Cornell University's Lab of Ornithology.

[R]eviewers ... jaws dropped in amazement. As dusk fell and Canada Geese settled almost invisibly onto Sapsucker Woods pond, the TeleVue resolved the same crisp feather detail at 75x as the Kowa could at 60x, and when we backed the TeleVue down to 60x, it was as if a light had been turned on inside the scope.

Excerpts from TV-85 review by Clyde Crewey on Cloudy Nights Telescope Reviews website

• The Double Cluster is spectacular with stars everywhere and great color contrast. The Trapezium is easily resolved even at 32x and the stars are crisp points of light suspended in the gas cloud. Amazingly, the TV-85 reveals as much of the gas cloud as does my 6" Dob. Contrast does matter after all!
• I'm aware that the price of the TV-85 is not unsubstantial, but I can honestly say that not once have I thought about that when I'm at the eyepiece. I'd be willing to bet you won't either!

Excerpt from the Winter 2002 issue of Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology's Living Bird magazine review of birding scopes, by Kenneth V. Rosenberg.

... the Tele Vue [85] took me for one of the best birding rides of my life. Scanning out across the lake at 75x, I spotted a whitish speck in the distant heat waves that I thought might be a loon. I then inserted a 2x Barlow lens between the zoom eyepiece and the scope, doubling its magnification to an incredible 150x. I could then clearly make out the face pattern and upturned bill of a Red-throated Loon. This local rarity was not even visible though my 10x binoculars. Continuing to play at 150x, I could discern the eye color of some immature gulls on a jetty 200 yards from the shore -- ah, if only shore bird season weren't so long past!

Birding review excerpt from Better View Desired / Reference Standard Tele Vue 85: An Unconventional Scopearticle

The 85 shows, at any distance and any power, right out to the limits of daylight viewing, all the detail, I am convinced, that there is to see. In direct comparison with the finest scopes on the market, the Tele Vue 85 consistently shows a brighter, more subtly detailed, image of the bird. You can see things in the Tele Vue's image that just aren't there in the Pentax 80 mm or the Nikon Fieldscope.

Excerpt from Sky & Telescope review by Chris Cook

The Tele Vue 85mm f/7 APO refractor is truly an incredible instrument with superb, well-corrected optics. The scope's mechanical construction is also first class all the way. Whether you are traveling half way around the world to photograph a total solar eclipse or just casually observing from your backyard, the Tele Vue 85 offers today's amateurs an extremely powerful, compact instrument capable of delivering stunning images of the universe around us. This scope is a real gem!

Cornell Ornithology Lab Reviews TV-85

The scope really proved its value last fall at the Montezuma Muckrace - an annual birding competition and conservation fundraiser held each year at Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge - where it was used to scan shorebirds on a massive mudflat. The clarity and brightness of the scope made it possible to make accurate bird identifications at staggering distances. By changing eyepieces, this scope was dead sharp at all powers, surpassing the image quality of any other scope.