In MHO most scopes under $500 new will be cheap Chinese crap. I made the unwise choice to buy one of these and soon found the optical quality was poor and soon after I started using it I had a great deal of back lash in the fine focus.

I would suggest you look on eBay for a good name brand scope used. I bought a very nice Nikon for $300 and I have seen many others there for even less. I bought this as a gift for my college age granddaughter who is carrying a 4.0 at MSU and plans to be a vet. I could not resist trying it out. I compared it against a “500 power” microscope the local hobby store recommended. This was a scope I paid over $200 for. Using some prepared slides I purchased I compared images.

The Chinese scope has only one light intensity. I tried several slides at different magnifications. The 500x was worthless. In fact I got acceptable performance at 200X and 100x.

The Nikon was so much better I have a hard time describing it. It was like looking thru a piece of wax paper (cheap scope) then taking it away. There was a difference it the way I used the Nikon. I would focus first then dial back the light intensity to get the best image. The highest power I tried was 400x (40x with 10x eye piece) it was so much sharper and more contrast. Even at 100x on the Nikon I could see detail I could not see at 200x on the other scope. I did not try 1000x because it said oil on it and I know about that.

I took the $200 scope back and they “up graded “me to a scope with the label of a telescope maker I know about. This was more then twice as much. It looked very much like the Nikon. And it was much better then the $200 unit. In a matter of hours it developed slop in the focus. It had a movable stage, but it was useless because of all the backlash. The image was better but not as good as the Nikon and then only in the center.

I took it back and they asked what was I thinking The Nikon is like a $2000 scope with some of the world’s best optics0 how could I even think the Chinese scopes would compare.

End result- I got a credit and order another Nikon off eBay for $299 plus 48 for shipping

FOM