Awesome concept

   I just bought this microscope and after some initial disappointment, because I didn't really know how to use it and the documentation that comes with it is almost useless, I am now quite pleased with it. There is some confusion in reviews here over what this microscope can do -- is it really a 400x power microscope? The advertising describes it as "Magnification: 20x - 400x (Plus digital zoom in 640x480 mode)" Does that mean it can continuously zoom from 20X to 400x? The manual that comes with it does not really tell you how to use it. So I did a little experimentation, and found that it really has two fixed magnifications, appx. 20x and appx. 400x.There is a cylindrical drum you can twist for focusing the microscope. As you turn it an internal lens moves up and down the barrel, changing the distance to the specimen. On the drum, there's a scale, with markings from 20 to 400 on it, that is quite misleading -- it suggests that you can optically zoom continuously from...Read more if (typeof amznJQ != "undefined") { amznJQ.onReady('jQuery', function() { amznJQ.available('popover', function() { var widgetDom = jQuery("#R1IGLAHE0T8Y8L_imageSection_1CD79CAA-2C29-11E6-8A2A-F26AF675A268"); var images = widgetDom.find(".review-image-thumbnail"); for (var c=0;c

Paul gave a very good review of the product and a great mini-lesson on how to use it.It is a great little toy to play with and is a lot of fun. However, I am a teacher and had hoped to use it in a more serious manner in the classroom. I liked the idea of being able to make on-screen measurements and unfortunately, that is the most lacking feature of the product. With my version of software, I am able to enter in a magnification of 400 while making measurements. It was pretty accurate showing .97 mm for one tic mark on a ruler. I know my degree of accuracy in drawing the line was certainly not within .03 mm so I am happy with the results. The reason I am rating it a 3 is simply because of the difficulty in this measurement process. Because the measurements can only be made at 0 distance (i.e. the object at 0 distance from the end of the clear plastic ring) it limits the types of measurements that can be made. For example the field of view at x20 is about 13mm as...Read more

To start, I already own an $800 microscope that has a magnification of 400x, so I thought I would buy this after reading the magnification just to see how they compare, especially considering the price is so generous. I thought that after plugging it in, the magnification wouldn't be perfect, but it would at least be ball park. Not even close. In fact, its a down right lie. The maximum magnification that is claimed to be 400x is actually closer to 100x than any of the others I compared it to using the stronger microscope that I have. The clarity under that magnification is between fair and good, but not great. This is a neat piece of equipment, but it really is just a toy. It should not be considered by anyone that actually needs good resolution microscopy with a magnification greater than about 100x.