Discontinued gear
Orion and Meade are gone. Here's what replaces them.
Their parent company ceased operations in July 2024. Production stopped and retailer stock has sold through — of 102 Orion and Meade SKUs still listed across the shops we track, every one is out of stock. Searches for these models land on dead ends, so each page below matches the discontinued scope to what you can actually buy today, on aperture and type.
| Discontinued model | Aperture | Type | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Orion SkyQuest XT10 | 254 mm | Dobsonian | What to buy instead → |
| Meade LX200 | 203 mm | Catadioptric | What to buy instead → |
| Meade LX90 | 203 mm | Catadioptric | What to buy instead → |
| Orion SkyQuest XT8 | 203 mm | Dobsonian | What to buy instead → |
| Orion StarBlast 6 | 150 mm | Dobsonian | What to buy instead → |
| Orion SkyQuest XT6 | 150 mm | Dobsonian | What to buy instead → |
| Meade Polaris 130 | 130 mm | Reflector | What to buy instead → |
| Orion SpaceProbe 130 | 130 mm | Reflector | What to buy instead → |
| Meade ETX 125 | 127 mm | Catadioptric | What to buy instead → |
| Orion Apex 127 | 127 mm | Catadioptric | What to buy instead → |
| Orion StarBlast 4.5 | 114 mm | Dobsonian | What to buy instead → |
| Orion SkyQuest XT4.5 | 114 mm | Dobsonian | What to buy instead → |
| Orion SkyScanner 100 | 100 mm | Dobsonian | What to buy instead → |
| Meade ETX 90 | 90 mm | Catadioptric | What to buy instead → |
| Meade Infinity 70 | 70 mm | Refractor | What to buy instead → |
Why they disappeared
Orion Telescopes & Binoculars and Meade Instruments shared a parent company, which ceased operations in July 2024. Both brands stopped production. What you find searching today is mostly stale listings, out-of-stock pages and third-party resellers at inflated prices.
Second-hand is a different story — these were sold in enormous numbers and used examples trade actively on the astronomy classifieds. An XT8 in good condition is still an XT8. If you want one new, though, the pages above give the closest equivalents still in production.