In terms of optical quality and working distance, I think this meets my needs 100%, the working distance is long enough that i now have room for my hands, and I no longer have to hunch over my desk in order to see through the eyepiece.

With that said, I will have to knock some stars off because of two issues I had. The first being the stand. I don't like it, its heavy but not sturdy, I knew this when purchasing which is why I have been using microscopes with an adjustable arm stand. The reason being those provide a completely unobstructed view of my boards without having to hit the base of the microscope stand. By design, this microscope does not fit the amscope arm stand, which is a real shame because the arm stand solved all the problems I had with my work.

In order to solve this problem I had, I ended up swapping out the focusing rack of the SE400 with another AMscope monocular microscope. The job was messy, but doable.

Second problem, and perhaps even more critical than the arm stand, was that the objectives were knocked out of alignment. This might have happened during shipping because one of the objective pieces was so poorly aligned there was no way I could cross my eyes to make it viewable. For those that might be unfamiliar with binocular microscopes, think of it as if you were watching birds with handheld binoculars, your eyes are only supposed to focus in to produce one image, not double images. Thankfully the process to fix the microscope objectives was an easier task than the arm stand job. It only required a small watchmakers screwdriver and some back and forth adjustments. Once I got the two objective lenses into alignment, the image was nice, crisp and sharp.

So yay me I got two things I wanted out of a microscope. One was a stand that would give me complete freedom on my desk so that I can move, rotate, shift, etc, reducing the chance of an accident. Second, I got longer working distance so now I can work with my hand tools, etc. without being obstructed by the microscope. I just wish my experience installing this and fixing microscope was not as labor and resource intensive as it was.

Nice microscope for the price paid, 148-dollars on 16JAN2017, in the deal of the day. Outstanding tool to assist taking out splinters, determining the extent of damage to small parts, determining why small connectors fail, rekeying locks, reading text manufactures obviously purposefully make so small that they must assume no one is able to read it and similar tasks, especially for those over age 50. The 10x meets my needs, but I am keeping the 20x eye-piece standing by, if needed. My only complaint is that it does NOT come with Instructions, as is listed under "What's in the Box?" in Amazon's posting. AmScope wants to know when customers receive the microscopes, so force a registration, using a five-digit password printed outside of the box, in order to obtain the PDF of the owner's manual. I was thinking of taking off a star for forcing me to waste my time and printer to obtain a manual, but decided to just rate it on the value of the unit. It was cheap, heavy-duty and works well, so I am giving it five stars. Wish there was a cheap, reliable camera for this scope, but due to other reviews, I now have zero interest with purchasing an AmScope camera for this scope.

I've really found this more useful than I like to admit. There are just so many times as a nearsighted hobbyist that the extra work range makes this a great solution. The 20x eyepieces are far too narrow a field of view to be practical for anything aside from sheer magnification, they dont make great use for board work where you need to see what you are doing.The 10x eyepieces are excellent, and are truly widefield, a pleasure to work with. The LED light is bright, and very useful, although I'd prefer two, one on each side of the work, or a ringlight attachment. The stand is solid, and supports the body very well, but, is kind of limited in motion, and you have to be prepared to move the work under it, but at this price, thats acceptable.

Great microscope for PCB work for its price, feels very solid, stays steady, good work space between lens and surface. Very happy.
In the picture below small PCB component is a schottky diode 1mm long, installed it without any issues.

Update:
Working with 0201 components is also easy and actually fun, I even tried to install two 01005 (some dust particles larger than that package) components recently just to sake of challenge and it was easy too, all of that at 10x magnification. In the third photo you can see a board where at the top are two 01005 components, in the middle is 0201 and bottom/right is 0402.

This is a quality product. It is well designed and perfect for my purposes for SMD soldering, rework, and repair.

I only used the 10x eyepieces so far, but for now I probably won't need the 20x unless I use it for other purposes.

I have no eye strain when using, and the rubber eyepiece attachments make it comfortable.

I wear glasses, but I don't need them when using this microscope, which makes it all the more valuable.

It you are looking for a quality microscope at an excellent price, then this is the scope for you.