BTW, I recentlly tried and returned an Orion 120ST which had great
light gathering aperture and showed a stunning amount of stars
compared to the little Pronto but, I felt, the optics were faulty as I
couldn't get solid focus with any eyepieces and stars looked a little
astigmatic.

Any chance a pinched objective was the problem? Historically, many of the
Asian refractors have a threaded ring that is pinching the objective, loosening
up that ring a bit will often improve things a great deal. One theory is that
they do this for shipping purposes.

jon