Celestron 44320 Microscope Digital Kit MDK,White

Celestron 44121 Microscope Kit From the product description: Biological microscope with powers from 40x to 600x • 4x, 15x, and 30x objective lenses and 10-20x zoom eyepiece featuring high-quality glass optics • Includes 3 prepared glass slides, 2 blank glass slides, 1 blank well slide, light diffuser, needle probe, eye dropper and tweezers • Sample specimens to get you observing immediately: rocks, honeybee wing, and brine shrimp The package arrived quickly, even with the holiday rush. This was a gift for our niece, a lovely pre-teen that loves to look at things like bugs. My sister in law suggested it as a Christmas gift and it was a definite hit! Our niece immediately started looking for things that she could examine. Is this the best microscope ever? No. Is it sufficient for an older and curious child? Absolutely! It has fostered a continued interest in science. She won't cure cancer with this, but at least provided an affordable option that, who knows, may lead to such opportunities when she grows up. And I didn't need to run all over town trying to find one since it was on Amazon. That, at Christmastime, is a win-win.

This product is excellent from an childhood educational perspective. Great, inexpensive way to learn how a standard compound microscope works. The product advertises magnification to 600x, and while technically true, nothing will be visible at such magnifications, the optical quality is just too poor. Human blood cells will be visible, but will be too blurry to discriminate their type or true color. For looking at small insects and small objects found in nature, this will be a great entry level tool for a child. However, if you desire to see any kind of detail at the cellular level, you're going to need to spend significantly more.

I read some of the reviews AFTER I purchased this microscope. I'm glad I did not read it before. I am very happy with this product. After the initial setup I tried to use the camera without screwing it in to the eyepiece tube. There was no image, and I was concerned the camera was damaged. Also the penlight kept turning off by itself. I called Celestron's TS hotline. The rep walked me through the cam installation, and after providing a receipt via email, Celestron promptly shipped a new penlight. Once I got the cam up and running I took a human sperm sample. Don't ask! I had to apply stain in order to see them, but they were swimming around clear as a bell. The zoom lens works very well. I switched the image to my HDTV via HDMI, and the image was better on the TV. It is not the strongest magnification you can get, so realize that certain samples are out of the question. If you want to see red blood cells you can, but not as clear as you would at 2500X-3000X. If that's what you want to study, don't buy this one. It is made of plastic, but it is durable plastic, not cheap plastic. It is lightweight and easily stored. I will get a lot of use out this. If I can update this post with images I will attempt to provide some for other interested customers. Finally, I feel I should note that I used Google Picasa instead of the software included. The software included worked just as well, but sent the PUP scanner on my antivirus crazy, forcing me to disable my A/V in order to install. Too risky for me, so I used Picasa instead. This product comes with a warranty. If you have any problems with your order, call Celestron, don't send it back. In my case, I was satisfied with the outcome of my TS interaction.

I bought this microscope to use as a hobby as well as to get the kids my relatives occasionally bring over interested in science. However, the resolution is so dismal that you could see colors and maybe a blurry outline of the specimen you're trying to see but all in all, this microscope is disappointingly terrible. As soon as I received it I turned right around and plunked down some money for an Amscope and the difference was amazing. You could see everything in super fine detail, the feel of the microscope was better and the kids were WAY more interested once they were able to see the finer details of the specimens we had. I was doubtful of buying this microscope because of the price (made me think it was cheap and flimsy) but the positive reviews made me want to give it a shot...I feel a little misled now and I want whoever buys this next to listen carefully. This is a TOY microscope. If you want to buy this, keep your expectations low. I suppose it's good to start out with if your kid is really young because one of mine broke this in literally the first two seconds she touched it (i fixed it though....that's the one good thing about this microscope. It's cheap and childproof) and that prepared me for letting them use the more expensive one cause by then they understood, hey its fragile and you need to be careful and patient. But really, if you want this for a budding scientist and they're in Junior High and up, invest in a better microscope than this.

This is a 50 dollar microscope. It does the deed, fairly well, but not superbly. Some advice: 1. Yes, there is some plastic and it's packaged in styrofoam so there will be a lot of static electricity and hence, dust -- use an air can to blow it away. 2. The camera is a simple CMOS one that has drivers for all Windows OS to date, but they are unsigned! (What is up with that, Celestron?) Hence Win7 won't accept them. You'll have to dig up an old XP box or laptop to run the camera. 3. The camera (rather easily) replaces the eyepiece and hence, takes away the 10-20x eyepiece magnification. So you are looking at 30x max for pictures that you can then blow up to your heart's content, but with loss of detail. As well, the focus is hard to do well with the camera on, compared to looking through the eyepiece, but it's not unusable. 4. Really, the optics aren't bad for $50. You'll have a hard time looking at coins for example, because even at lowest settings, the magnification is really good. 5. For best results, keep gunk off the optics. One way to gunk them up is if you put the slide in upside down, and the glue to the top glass on the slide gets rubbed on the stage. ;) As the manual says, you can clean the optics with photography camera cleaner. 6. My kit came with a very useful contrast light diffuser, negating any problems with heat from the LED light beneath the stage. Really, I'm pretty happy with this toy. As a grown adult, I plan to use it to get ideas for art from the microscopic world. It serves its purpose for me.

I received this Celestron Microscope kit much earlier than I expected. I am very happy with how quickly it arrived. The microscope itself is fine for my purposes. I intend to use it as a hobby, thus far, it has worked well. The optics are of great quality, the prepared slides are quite fascinating, and everything in the package is intact. Setup of the microscope was very easy and fast. Learning to use it, even if you have never laid eyes on a microscope in your life, is very simple. For such a great price, you can't go wrong with this microscope. If I have any complains at all, the plastic tweezers that are contained in the package don't work very well. Also, the frame is plastic, which does not trouble me but it may trouble some people. I wouldn't recommend this microscope for young children. It is durable, provided that you aren't careless. The package includes pretty much all of the things that you need to get started with basic microscopy. I like this microscope, it is great for my needs and satisfies my curiosity about the tiny world that we cannot see with the naked eye. For amateur science/biology, you likely won't find a microscope this good for such a price.

This a a decent scope. It is made out of plastic and could easily break. It is very light. Does work fairly well . The images are pretty clear. You will need two triple A batteries to make the light work. Decent scope for 25 bucks.

I chose this microscope because I was so impressed with this brand of telescope, also from Amazon. It is first class, two,light sources (need triple A and double A batteries). It works like the larger metal ones we used at school! I bought it for my 4 year old grandson who is fascinated by science. He can use it, but I recommend due to danger of glass slides, that adult supervision and assistance is a must. It is truly for an 8+ who would enjoy it themselves. It is made of heavy plastic, with metal and optical glass lenses. The rotating lenses move easily and the up and down mechanism works great. There is also a mirror for illumination, but using the lights, totally adjustable, gives the best result. It comes with starter glass slides and specimens, but We enjoyed the premise specimen slide sets also from Amazon. This is an amazing device at just a great price. No my grandson wants to examine blood. Volunteers???