Review on 🔬 AmScope T490B-DK Compound Trinocular Microscope: WF10x and WF20x Eyepieces, 40X-2000X Magnification, Brightfield/Darkfield, Halogen Illumination, Abbe Condenser, Double-Layer Mechanical Stage, Sliding Head, High-Resolution Optics by Epitome Ballard

The only difference between men and boys is the price of their toys. In terms of value for money, this is possibly the best toy for techies.PROS Impressive presentation. It's huge, 14-1/2 inches tall without a camera and nearly 20 inches tall with a compact digital camera attached to the trinocular port. With an SLR/DSLR camera it would be slightly larger. Well built with a really solid feel to everything. Movable knobs such as focus knobs, condenser position knobs, and stage position knobs move smoothly. The optics are pretty good. Achromatic (rather than planar) obvious in this price range. But certainly good enough for students and hobbyists like me. This is not a toy in the cheap sense of the word. This is a serious tool. All in all I got great value for the $380 I paid for this T490B-DK kit. (This is a T490B microscope complete with an optional DK-DRY100 dark field condenser). I recommend saving $90 by purchasing the T490B without the darkfield condenser. You can always add a condenser EDUCATION Ideal for home schooling In 1950, when I was 8-10 years old, I was given a cheap chemistry set and a toy microscope. I could never do anything with a chemistry kit and the microscope was useless junk. A great idea. Encourage your kids to be interested in science by giving them science toys that will only frustrate them. Microscope and several (2-4) boxes of finished slides. The benefit isn't just the "adventure discovery" of getting really good views of really small things. You place your child in front of a device of this size and complexity, and the message to the child is clear: "I take you and your upbringing seriously. Very serious." And it'll keep you entertained and impress your friends, too. CONS (surprisingly few, and they're nits) The instruction manual is lame, to say the least. The good news is that a little assembly is required, which pretty obvious after looking at the photos and I didn't have any major issues with the assembly.If you have any questions AmScope has really good phone support and live chat on their website.Eyepieces have limited eye relief so if you wear glasses you could get in trouble. I'm very nearsighted, but I just take my glasses off and let the microscope's focusing optics compensate for my vision. If that doesn't work for you, so you have to wear glasses, your eyes are too far from away from the eyepieces to see the whole image at once. This means you have to move your head to scan the whole image. (The exit pupil i st is the maximum distance your eye can be from the eyepiece to still see the entire image produced by the device.) MOUNTING RECOMMENDATIONS The top of the binocular head has a hole for the camera mounting tube. There is a plug in this hole that must be removed to install the pipe. But there is no connector for the tube itself, so if you don't have a tube camera, don't mount the tube now, otherwise dust will get into the head of the binoculars. If you're new to this topic (like it was to me), it's time to check out the Wikipedia article. Although I bought a dark field condenser for this microscope, I don't have much experience with it. Darkfield is actually for unstained specimens, and since I only prepared slides, all of my specimens were stained. The darkfield images I get are pretty faint, and I assume the spot is absorbing most of the light that would otherwise be scattered by the unstained samples. I don't know how this will work in the long run, but if I find out anything interesting I'll update this review.