Carson Microbrite 20X-40X Zoom LED Lighted Pocket Microscope Limited Time

Got this based on the blurb on CoolTools. The 20-40x magnification lets you see a surprising amount of detail; more useful and interesting than I expected. LED is well-positioned, plenty bright enough, and nicer white color than the old incandescents that cheap microscopes were always saddled with.

Cheap, unfussy, and very easy to use; enough so that my five-year-old has used it to examine every flat surface and textile in the house, plus hair, paper, her own fingerprints...it's been a stream of "Oh! That's amazing! Look at that!"

No idea on battery life; the momentary light switch (you have to hold it on) is a little frustrating when you're trying to focus on something tricky, but on the other hand it won't be left on either.

Oh! Make sure to look at a "white" pixel on your LCD or iPhone.

Highly recommended. If this breaks, we'll buy another.

I bought this pocket microscope for viewing gold ore samples in the field and general viewing of small objects.

It works great. It is a bit awkward to handle as the light needs to be held on continuously while viewing and adjusting the focus, but this prevents prematurely killing the batteries by forgetting and leaving the light on. I can't say this is not a good feature as I have killed the batteries on my other one and they run as much as $5 each.

Cheaper hearing aid batteries may work in place of the more expensive electronics batteries. They did on my other one. They will need to be the same physical size.

The LED illumination is important to me as the battery life is much longer than with conventional lights.

For the price, this thing is great. I'm not super worried about damaging it, it's light, and the LED puts enough light on the subject to see things well.