Buying a microscope for a holiday gift? Here’s some help choosing!

With the holidays fast approaching us, many parents and grandparents will be looking to getting a quality microscope for their young prodigies and beloved children alike as a holiday gift. However, who knows what to look for in a microscope, when technology is rapidly changing, and most of us haven’t used microscopes in years or decades (unless in the medical or scientific field professionally, of course, or a strong hobbyist)? It’s difficult to keep up, and all the technical jargon can be very confusing to novices looking to be sure they get the right unit.

Here’s a quick guide in what to look for this year for your young science explorers (and a few recommendations along the way):

1. What kind of things will we be looking at? What kind of microscope is your child going to need?

This is one of the first things you will want to ask yourself or your child, as this determines what type of microscope will work best for them as a holiday gift. There are many different kinds out there, but primarily, the two are stereo microscopes, and compound microscopes. These are also referred to as low power and high power, respectively.

MicroscopeGenius.com’s Holiday Gift Buying Guide

Compound microscopes are like what they will use in a classroom to view microscopic samples like bacteria and protozoa in tap water or pond water. They may even do saliva or blood samples with a compound unit. These are characterized by the use of glass slides and passing the light up through the bottom of the microscope’s stage (which means your sample must be translucent to be viewed with this kind. Here are some compound microscopes for students that will be great ideas for the holidays (click to view).

Stereo microscopes are for larger objects or ones that light cannot pass through, like rocks, stamps, coins, bugs, or objects around the house. These are ideal as a holiday gift for younger audiences, as they tend to be less technical to use, and offer a wider variety of samples that can be seen without additional purchases (you don’t need slides, you just need the microscope). They’re usually used for dissections, and are characterized typically by a top light, wide/flat base, and binocular eyepieces. There’s a huge range of quality levels and prices for stereo microscopes, but if you need just a basic one for a small child, the fixed power units will be more than enough. For the hobbyists or professional users, you’ll want one with a zooming head or even a boom stand (for large samples). You can find zooming stereo microscopes here (click to view), or fixed power stereo microscopes here (click to view).

2. Do I pick a Monocular, Binocular, or Trinocular microscope for my holiday gift choice?

Monocular works best for small children who cannot comfortably view in a binocular, although if you expect them to grow into a unit, binocular is more comfortable as they grow. You can use a binocular as a monocular also (just one eye) without any loss in visual quality. Trinocular is the same as binocular, but with a third port for a camera at an additional cost. If you plan to mount a DSLR/SLR, or want to set and forget a camera in place, trinoculars are the way to go as a holiday gift.

3. How much magnification do I need?

This is wholly dependent on what you want to view (or what the person you’re getting the holiday gift for needs). For compounds, I recommend 40x-1000x (the normal range for compound microscopes of all age levels and skill groups, like this extremely popular compound monocular unit here), while for stereo microscopes, we recommend the largest range of powers possible. If using a fixed power unit, for example, 10x-20x-30x-60x would be great for a holiday gift, but I’d prefer 20x-40x-80x (examples linked to Amazon with different microscope packages for sale). If using a zooming head, most companies units can be extended by changing eyepieces or adding accessory (Barlow) lenses, so a 7x – 45x range would be great for a base unit or starting point.

4. What are coarse & fine focusing? Do I need them for a gift? What about a mechanical stage?

Coarse and fine focusing are very important elements on compound microscopes. Coarse focusing is present on all microscopes–if it isn’t, don’t get it! If you can’t focus a microscope to get it into view clearly, then the unit is worthless. Coarse focusing means that when you turn the knob on the unit, the stage or head of the microscope moves quickly or travels quite far. This allows you to move the unit through the range of travel quickly to get it as close as possible to focus. Fine focus does the opposite–it moves the stage very slowly and in small increments, which allows you to fine tune the focus to get the image crystal clear in the microscope.

A quality microscope has both coarse and fine focusing, although many microscopes designed for very small children only have the coarse (so that it’s easier for them to use). Be careful of quality here though–many only have coarse due to trying to keep the cost of the unit down, and if made with poor materials like plastic (My First Lab units are prime examples of this), won’t last long. Metal construction and glass optics are preferred (and the units I recommend on my blog will all be like this, so no doubts or fears here.)

As far as a mechanical stage, this allows you to move the sample or the stage in order to scan across a sample or center on a specific area of the sample easily. You can do this with your hands on the slide as well, however it is more cumbersome and less accurate to do so in this manner. While not critical, many users find they wish they did get a mechanical stage from the get go. For example, this unit is a great holiday gift for junior high to undergraduate college courses, and includes both coarse and fine focusing as well as an LED light for longevity and brightness, and a mechanical stage to boot (B120C units make great holiday gift ideas).

These features are almost exclusive to compound units. Stereo microscopes are low magnification, so they only have one focusing knob for the most part. They don’t require the ultra fine movements that compound units do. Also, since the samples are larger, moving them by hand is less of an issue, so mechanical stages are rare on these.

5. I want a digital microscope for my child for a holiday gift. Does it come built in? Is it a separate item? What resolution do I need?

Very few microscopes actually have cameras built into them. They do exist, however most quality microscopes are ones that have cameras inserted into the ocular tubes of the unit (where the eyepieces go, or on a trinocular port if the unit has one). This means you have a standalone camera that can be replaced if damaged, and you can always upgrade the quality of it by replacing it as the technology increases (and better ones become cheaper!).

For resolution on a camera, it really depends on what you plan to do with the camera. If you’re just looking to view samples on your computer (for homeschooling applications or showing multiple audiences), then there isn’t a need to go above 3 megapixels, like this camera here that I love to recommend (AmScope’s MU300 makes an awesome holiday gift). You don’t want to go too high, as you will experience lag on your screen with high resolution cameras (it takes longer to refresh the image since it has more data than lower resolution ones). For small children just to take pictures, or K-12 students needing to do a project, you can go as low as 1.3MP, or as high as about 5MP.

For professionals looking to use a microscope for web listings of their items (gemologists, rocks, coins, stamps, circuit boards, etc) or pictures for textbooks/academic journals, higher resolutions may be desired in their holiday gift needs. This is to ensure that you have a high enough resolution image to use for that printing purpose, as professional printing demands extremely high DPI and resolutions in order to print clarity. For these, I would recommend no lower than a 5MP camera, up to a 10MP camera (as frame rates beyond are dismally bad, and difficult to use).

Also, be sure to check to see if the camera you’re getting is compatible with your computer before you pick one up as part of a holiday gift package! Almost all cameras will work fine on Windows PCs, however not all are compatible up to Windows 8. Check versions to be sure that what you’re getting won’t end up as a frustrating return. For Mac users, many times, the softwares are available, but limited in terms of what you can do on a Mac. Be sure to check with the seller or manufacturer to see what they have available to use.

6. I still don’t know what to get as a holiday gift! Can you help me out?

I sure can! Although I’ve made a number of recommendations above, I’ll be adding very soon a full plethora of microscope reviews. Just click on the appropriate category on the right hand side (or the top navigation bar) to see what kind of models you’re looking for, and what I think about the items that are out there!

For quick reference until then, here are some really great microscope packages for those young explorers that will spark their passion for knowledge this holiday season!

Compound Holiday Gift For Young/Middle Audiences (Ages 8-18): M500C-PS100-WM-E

This is a monocular compound microscope that does 40x – 2500x (plenty of magnification for all ages, used to view slides with pond water, tap water, small bugs, etc), and comes with a prepared set of 100 slides that are made and ready to view. It also includes a book to get familiar with the microscope as well as offer further project ideas to keep them going. I also includes a basic USB camera to use with Windows operating systems. It’s really an all in one package in terms of a gifting idea, so you don’t have to worry if they have everything they need to get started right when they open it.

Stereo Holiday Gift Idea for Young Audiences (Ages 8-18): SE306R-AZ-E2

This is a basic dual lit stereo microscope that includes 20x, 40x, and 80x magnification settings as well as a 2.0MP UBS camera (capable of taking images at 40x or 80x). All of those features are honestly all you need to have a working stereo microscope. This in particular is great for the younger children, as they can grab pretty much anything from around the house to throw under the microscope and magnify it. This could be dust particles, food, paper clips, pens, their fingers. Quite literally their imagination is the limit in terms of what can be viewed with this, which provides a low cost microscope setup with universal functionality–that keeps them busy with it longer, for less cost. Perfect!

Stereo Boom Holiday Gift For Hobbyists: SM-3T-80S-M

For your special hobbyist, this unit is a great addition to any workshop. It has plenty of magnification for watch making, soldering, engraving, or inspection of other hand crafts, includes a bright 80 LED ring light (to keep the light where it’s needed on the sample while viewing), and even has a 1.3MP camera included to prevent the eyes from getting tired or worn out after long periods of use. Using the screen is often times far more convenient for your loved one to work with and get the work done faster–that means more time with the family!

If you have any other questions, feel free to leave a comment or message me! I’ll be sure to answer back, and can help you find just about anything you need for the perfect holiday season.