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This microscope works well for younger children. It seems durable enough and my nephew and daughter loved seeing what everything looked like under magnification.
The light underneath is not great, it works much better for us on a table near a window or below an indoor light. My son (8) did have a little trouble learning to focus the slides at first, but quickly got the hang of it. We've only had it for a month or so, but the die cast metal body seems very durable. We have not yet tried making our own slides, but he has had fun so far looking at the prepared slides. We bought "The World of the Microscope" with this and it has helped a lot to explain things and give him new ideas.
However, within the first hour, the bulb burned out. We bought this for our 6-year-old daughter, and she enjoys using it. It is simple enough that she can do it herself. We replaced it with the spare bulb that came in the box, and that one burned out less than a month later (and we do not use the microscope very much at all, she maybe turns it on a couple of times a week and never for very long). The slides that come with it are not very exciting, but we collected things from the yard to look at, and they showed up well.
The higher power settings are marginal because the light requirement goes up and the optics are just as bad as the low power setting. In the product description it touts itself as having a die-cast body but in reality, it is mostly plastic and is a rather flimsy piece of equipment. Got this for my 8yo daughter and she has fun with it. The tools are cheesy plastic with a "look of metal" to them. The optics are "cloudy" at best and not very good. I have not experimented much with trying to improve the clarity however we have observed some things under low power with some success. Still, my daughter likes it and that is what counts - she doesn't have anything to compare it to.For the $35 I paid, I would expect a little bit better of a piece. Maybe I'm expecting too much in remembering the all metal one I had when I was a kid that I wish I still had now.
What a waste of money. I purchased this scope from a local school store as a gift. I'm disappointed that quality-control for a company would allow this product to be sold, nevermind made. Within minutes my nephews were asking for my help focusing. I thought the excessive scratches on the lenses and slides were to blame, only to discover the eyepiece/lenses didn't even line up with the hole through which the light is coming through in the platform. (The difference between the models manufactured by this company vary only in the even cheaper painted-plastic "accessories" that actually, laughably, are labeled with "Warning: sharp object" labels). I'll be calling the company first thing in the morning for a refund so I can purchase something that the boys can actually use.
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