William Herschel described M72 as "a cluster of stars of a round figure but the very faint stars on the outside of globular clusters are generally a little dispersed as to deviate from a perfectly circular form."

This is a nice little globular in my 18-inch f/4.5.  At 94x it appeared primarily as a hazy round spot, with perhaps a few scattered individual stars.  The best view was at 430x.  The most striking feature was the smattering of brighter stars across the face of the cluster, scattered about quite irregularly over the round glow of countless fainter stars.  I was somewhat struck in general by how much more irregular this cluster appears than most globulars.; it's just a little ragged.