AmScope Stereo Boom Microscope Review – “SM-4TZ-FOR-3M” Trinocular 3.5x – 90x Boom Microscope + 3.0M USB PC Camera Review

The tried, true, and extremely popular SM-4TZ-FOR-3M from AmScope. This unit is a favorite of all different kinds of stereo microscope users, from watch making or repair, to PCB reworking, engravers, stone setting, and circuit board inspection uses–proving that it has the lighting strength, right magnification range, and a quick reacting camera to relieve your workers’ eyes or share the images with clients or colleagues for a variety of uses.

Besides the price being stellar for a stereo boom microscope of this flexibility in terms of uses and quality, the magnification range allows you as a user to really get down and fine tune your image in your microscope to get exactly what you need in the eyepiece (or camera if using that instead. Whether you need to view a large sample like a circuit board for soldering, reballing, or reworking, or if you a more magnified image for dissecting a sample for further analysis, this one stereo boom microscope can do it all. If 90x isn’t enough for you, swapping in a set of 20x eyepieces allows you to get up to 180x–more than is needed for any stereo microscope application.

AmScope Stereo Boom Microscope Review “SM-4TZ-FOR-3M“

Keep in mind though, that even with the high range of low powered magnification, this kind of stereo boom microscope is a stereo microscope, not a compound! You won’t want to be viewing slides with this, as it will not be able to visualize such fine elements like in pond water, blood, etc. For those, I’ll be sure to have a review up of some of my favorite compound microscopes. For those microscope novices, a stereo microscope is one in which the path of light is independent per each eye, and is slightly offset from each other. Because of this, you get a stereoscopic (or, 3D) image in your eyepieces, crucial for working with larger samples visible to the naked eye in which require manipulation by hand or tools. Compound microscopes have one path of light (a single objective) that splits up at the eyepieces, giving you a flat image, but at very high resolution and high magnification.

The camera itself is their MU300 device, which is a 3MP camera. It will give you a solid frame rate while still delivery high quality images. You can see on YouTube some sample videos that have been submitted by other users than myself if you want to see the image quality first hand, however this is one of their best in terms of the balance. The higher the resolution of a USB camera, the slower the frame rate is going to be. This happens because there’s more data (more pixels) in each image being taken. So for video, that’s more pixels that need to be rendered with each single frame of the video, and takes the computer longer to do that. That can cause frame lag, which is why video can look choppy on screen with high resolution devices (8MP or higher).

Another note to keep in mind is that the camera when used in the SM-4TZ-FOR-3M operates at about 20x, while your standard eyepieces are 10x. This means they don’t focus together–you’ll be using either the camera, or the eyepieces. Also, this unit does not put light out to all three ports on the stereo boom microscope at the same time. There is a pin on the left hand side of the head that allows you to direct all light to the eyepieces, or divert the right eyepiece’s light to the trinocular port.

Most people (including myself) aren’t made aware of this prior to purchase, so knowing it does help in determining what you can and can’t do with this unit. There is another model that does have light to all three, called the “Simul-Focal” stereo boom microscope model, however there is a premium to get that extra feature on the unit, and it doesn’t really simultaneously focus the camera to the eyepieces. I’ll be sure to get a review up of that also once my new head arrives.

Another great point is that this AmScope stereo boom microscope head is modular. You can fit it in any of their stands, or use any of their Barlow lenses/30mm eyepieces to fine tune your magnification range/working distance to what you need out of your unit. This is a blessing for engravers or watch makers–they can really get in there for fine manipulations, or zoom out for images for advertising their services, etc. This also means any of their light sources can be adapted for use.

The SM-4TZ-FOR-3M in particular comes with their HL250-AR, a 150 watt Fiber Optic Ring Light system. If you need extremely bright lighting with minimal heat on your sample, this is the baddest boy they carry, and won’t leave you wanting more. It, too, is modular, so you can get just connectors to change this to a single or dual gooseneck assembly.

With that said though, the SM-4TZ-FOR-3M really is as flexible of a AmScope stereo boom microscope as this company offers. I highly recommend it to anyone who can get multiple uses out of it, or just wants to explore the world around them–quite literally, you can grab anything and everything from around the house or office and view it with this microscope.

You can check it out from Amazon at any link in this review, or from here.