A Wonderful Gift for Christmas?
When I searched eBay with the keyword "Microscope", among many real microscopes I also saw cheap, but seemingly nice looking instruments, many offered at a very low price. In fact, I bid $0.99 cents and won one of these since I wanted to write this article. There was a catch, however, it cost me almost $20 to have it shipped!
When I finally got the microscope, I was not surprised about its quality, it was in fact an inferior product. There are many issues including how difficult it is to focus and how hard it is on the eyes. Giving this as a gift to someone as an introduction to this wonderful hobby should be a crime. I actually picked this one, because the ad said that it had new and improved optics.
Cheap microscope purchased on eBay
This microscope set boasted objective powers of: 75X, 300X, 900X. I could not get any image into focus at 900X. I took pictures of an easy object, a diatom with relatively large detail. After much effort to get it in focus, this is what I saw at 75X (I worked hard on this):
Diatom at 75x with $0.99 Microscope
I set up another microscope, which I also purchased on eBay. This model sold for $20 and shipping was free. Here is a picture of this microscope and the same diatom slide at 100x
Second tested microscope
Diatom at 100x with second $20 microscope
The difference in image quality is not even the biggest reason to stay away from this inferior product. The cheap, plastic toys are so hard to use that the user will lose interest very soon and thus will miss out on what could have been a life long exciting hobby. I would venture to say that almost any used microscope with standard size objectives would be a great gift, especially at the lower powers, like 40X and 100X. Those are the magnifications I use 95% of the time.
Beginner Articles Advanced Articles