Small telescopes are very good at providing little or fuzzy detail for people who want to see what they want to see in Mars rather than looking at detailed impages and data. Off course they are also good for a sort of hands on feel or really seeing Mars. I pretty much get that though from picking the planets out of the sky with the naked eye. You can't get a feel for their large scale relative movement across the sky over time with a telescope, you can with the naked eye. You can actually see movement relative to the stars though with a telescope and that is neat too.

Regards,
Mark