Microscope Satisfaction - Amscope

[Tiffany in Texas]

My shopping adventure & comparison chart is detailed here :

http://live-n-learn-at-home.blogspot.com/2010/10/microscopes.html

 

 

I purchased a microscope from Amscope ( http://store.amscope.com/b580b.html ) and I'm happy with my purchase. My scope is a high end model which may not be appropriate for all families and may not represent their lower end models, but, I wanted to let everyone know that it seems well made and we are having a blast.

 

One warning, the binocular eye piece is wonderful for one person to use but if you spend a lot of time swapping between different people then it is less useful and we ended up closing one eye a lot of time because it is too hard to reset for each person.

 

Second warning: If you have questions then use e-mail. The sales staff is excellent but I had some difficulty getting across to the technical department on the phone that I didn't need the x20 eye piece and would rather have an extra x10 eye piece with a reticule (measuring markings). Thought we got that cleared up but I guess not because I got a x10 eye piece and a x20 eye piece but no reticule. I don't think they do a lot of substitutions on their orders. But everything else was great, shipping was fast, and nothing was broken.

 

I was getting a really sick feeling during the first 30 minutes of us looking at prepared slides and was almost ready to start calling the help desk. We couldn't get it to focus. We just saw red blobs and gray blobs. It would almost focus and we would hit the stage stop. The instructions are horrible although the scope seems great so finally I grabbed a screwdriver and started playing with things. I found the stage stop screw and raised it by a considerable amount. Now we have to be careful not to raise the stage into our objective lens but we can focus. OH MY, it is so neat!!!

 

We went to the yard and got bugs and worms, we poked fingers for blood and scraped mouths for cells, we went through prepared slides and spent time Googling and comparing our views to ones on line. It was great. However, my great scientist son, the cause of the new biology books ( http://biology.com/ ) that are on their way and this budget busting microscope, got a headache 10 minutes into the adventure so it was my husband, daughter, and me spending our afternoon being grossed out by microscopic ewwwy bugs.

[Corraleno]

I forget where we bought our 'scopes, but I bought our slide sets from Amscope and have been very pleased with the quality. Several people recommended the slide sets on another board, and said they were nicer than what they had in college. We've gotten a lot of use out of them.

 

Jackie

[ourjourneys]

Do you know of replacement bulbs that are not tungsten? I would like to find flourescent, but have no idea where to begin to find them for this scope. We have the 1600 binocular and LOVE it! I highly recommend them for the quality and price. I am using mine alongside of the Sonlight scope and I would definitely go with Amscope for a higher powered one.