Celestron 44302 Handheld Digital Microscope: Customer Reviews & Product Details

If you use 40x or less this digital micoscope behaves beautifuly. If you want more than 40x light is lost and the image is not very good in part because the camera has not that much resolution. Still, for the price you cannot go wrong for most projects. I use the microscope to analyze pieces in my watchmaking job and is perfect also for imaging an record. Great product for the price!

I purchased one for myself and liked it so much that I purchased one for my Laboratory.
It takes a little effort to focus but it's not that hard to do. A diffuser for the LEDs of some sort would help when photographing shiny objects.

I actually purchased this microscope for work and we use it all the time. In fact, I had to get two more for the team as mine kept disappearing. For what they cost, they are worth it. The only problem is that the stand is cumbersome to use - so I typically use it in the handle held mode or steady it on a book or other object. The fact that it takes photographs is great. In fact, some of its primary use is as a digital camera zoomed in to specific areas for great detail.

Another way to think of this product is as a camera with great zoom, which is essentially what it is.

We chose this microscope not knowing what to expect. My wife has MS and it has a direct effect on her vision, so she uses this scope for reading, and seeing things that are difficult view. For the quality of this unit, I feel like we didn't pay enough for it. I could probably be critical about its performance, if I were employed in some scientific profession, or if I just enjoyed criticizing quality by specifications. I don't. This model is perfect for a home user, and probably for professional uses too.

There are 32bit and 64bit versions of the software for Windows 7 (and XP, Vista, etc.) available at the manufacturers download site. That in itself is the reason we pulled the trigger. We run Windows 7 on all of our machines, 32bit and 64bit, so its nice to be able to use this microscope on any of them.

I snagged the microscope the other day to zoom in on some o-rings that were leaking. The o-rings were on Danger Den/Fat Boy fittings installed in a D'Tek waterblock. I was really able to show the difference, with pictures, when describing the problem regarding the o-ring size.

I purchased this a while back as a gift and we've just now gotten around to using it. After installing the software on the included CD, we plugged it in and proceeded to grab anything in sight to put under the microscope. It's very easy to use- as soon as you launch the software, you are able to see what is under the microscope. There is a button on the microscope itself to take a picture, as well as buttons in the software to take a picture and a video. We found that using the on-screen buttons to work a little better, as it was sometimes difficult to hold the microscope steady and hit the button on it at the same time.

It really is fun to use, and would make an excellent teaching tool. Objects like fabric, coins, hair, and anything else with fine details are very interesting to see blown up. It works best with flat objects as the depth-of-field is pretty shallow, but if you are careful with the focus ring you can focus on other items too. I've attached a few "User Photos"- the denim, penny, and $10 bill are a few of the snaps we got.

I'm really surprised at how well the microscope works at this price. While it's probably not suitable for scientific work, it gives you a very interesting view of the world around you from a different perspective.