This is a great starter microscope for my 5 year old son. He loves looking at things and is very much into science. I am taking a star review away because not everything fits well in the case, they fall out of their designated spots. Also I do not like the way the light turns off. You have to flip the light over which my son doesn't do and ends up putting it away with the light on and the batteries die quickly. I wish there was an on/off button.

A mi niño de 8 y a mi nos encanto. Le pongo 4 estrellas porque la vista en la pc no es de muy buena. Pero aparte de eso es muy bueno.

This was a great intro to using a microscope for our 9, 7 and 5 year old children. The product is well made and the price is good. The instructions for use were also easy to follow. That said, my kids were not very interested in it beyond the initial use.

This is not a serious microscope, but you already know that from the price. It is however very workable, though you'll need a bit of patience -- while it's not going to fall apart it clearly skimps on build quality, so you have to readjust focus & recenter the slide very frequently. Change the objective lens, or simply change the focus, and you'll need to recenter the slide, which you have to do carefully, because the slightest weight on the slide table or stage throws it out of focus. Focusing itself requires a light touch due to the gearing used. The USB camera uses an uncommon cable, and the URL given in the manual to download the software is incorrect - you need to go here: amscope.com/pages/software-downloads . Their software isn't needed with Windows 11 however -- the built-in Camera app works just fine. Note that the regular eyepiece is a magnifying lens, so the camera will not achieve the same magnification. It may be necessary though -- using the regular eyepiece with the apparently uncoated optics was like shining a light into my eye, and I saw so many transparent floaters it made trying to see the material on the slide difficult. There was something [dust?] on the camera showing as a small circle slightly off center in the picture -- a cotton swab took care of that. They did go overboard tightening the 3 screws holding the black base cover in place, so it took quite a bit of force to remove them to install the batteries. It would have been very easy to strip the screw heads so please be careful. The plastic blank slides and slide covers were scratched out of the box, and those scratches refract the light from the LED.

I like everything about this item. Its a great buy. We've looked at everything from blood samples to flower and insect samples. Not so sure about the shrimp brine it came with. we did not get any shrimp from the solution provided. But we simply love the microscope. Made a great birthday gift for our budding scientist.