If I did another video like this, what other microscopes did I miss here that should be in that video? Let me know if you have other suggestions for aspects of comparing microscopes that you'd like to see as well. Thanks for watching! 😁
You missed the diy route. You could purchase C/CS-mount or M12 mount lens. Its $10-$20 for those 100x-180x. Then attached said lens to an old phone/dashcam/action cam bare sensor. You could already have it so you don't need to purchase, I've used an iphone 7 and it works. Bare sensor is the keyword here, you need to pry off the LENS on those to have the bare sensor (squarish). You could hot glue or 3d print an adapter but it works.
I'd love to see some more intermediately priced models. Like below 300, 500, 1000, and so on. It is no wonder, that microscopes for 10 bucks don't rock your world. And if it was sold for 10, it was maybe built for 3. But it doesn't need to be the 50.000 bucks Keyence monstrosity to get good digital photos.
I bought a Celestron 44302-A branded version of the third (Shiiri) and fourth (Oxbird) years ago. It seemed to be a no-name made USB device that was widely available under different names... you are right, the result is "disappointing", and is not really a microscope. It has it's uses for me, however it was barely worth buying.
A few years ago I bought Mustool G1200, which is also supposed to have 1200x magnification. It works great except for not ideal colour reproduction. I wonder if you could test that one, and see if it really is 1200x.
These cheap USB microscopes are actually pretty useful for servicing electronics and watches, also taking very little space when not in use. And these do differ in magnification. Less magnification is better as it's easier to position and focus. Their online descriptions are however all over the place, so you'll never know what exactly are you buying.
I started using these few years ago on microelectronic repairs, and they work just fine for some uses. When you need to improve the precision on your work, they can become insufficient, but that doesn't mean they are bad at all. It depends much on what type of job you need to do, so maybe spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars on fancy high-end equipment just doesn't worth at all, because you can do the same job with a simple and cheap microscope. Don't you think?
@@Jah_Rastafari_ORIG I'm not saying that usb micros are the best option for professional use, just saying that for some uses they aren't that bad... As I said, I started working on microelectronics just 2 o 3 years ago with those micros... eventually I had to change it for a trinocular because I needed more precision and optic quality.
Unfortunately they are not very good when you need to repair laptop motherboards or something larger because they either have no mount at all or are bolted to small table which pretty limit the usable area. Also due to diffraction and zoom artifacts it is difficult to see small IC and connector pins at most angles. Another drawback is low frame rate and data transfer speed where picture of observable area is a bit jerky and appear after some delay which become very annoying when you are soldering IC in LQFP-64 package for example. But yes, they are usable in simple cases.
I've just bought the exact same scope you show in your thumbnail and have to say that for board repair it's spot on. It cost me GB£16 and is ideal for repairing xbox controllers/laptops and similar. I'm a hobbyist repair person who does these things because I enjoy the job, helping other people is pretty good as well, and to spend upwards of GB£300 on a scope (for me) would be a ridiculous waste of money that I would never recoup.
TY, I am glad to see actual consumers mentioning the stupidity that is this video. I mean I for one am shocked the 10 dollar camera is not up to par with the thousand dollar one. So, honest question. He cut off all actual zoom footage here and never really demonstrated them at their full potential. What would you say its like. Do you get artifacts and grain at higher magnifications?
thats what i got mine for. eyes need some help these days, circuits are getting harder to nose around in. microscope worked great and didnt even require 24/7 location tracking and bluetooth in the app.
@@seditt5146you only get one magnification and a focus 😂 pinch to zoom setup. and yes a little lens corona on the images, not grainy really. and not much corona given the crappy toy plastic lenses involved. my telescope is worse than this with its pricey lenses. its good enough for me. if i needed a $1000 scope i would only be comparing it to the 10,000 versions. im happy handing over the $20 for the cheap thing that fits its purpose. basic magnification.
Another option, if you have a C or CS mount camera (such as the Raspberry Pi High Quality Camera, with it's 12.3MP Sony IMX477R sensor) is just to buy the optical components you need for your use case. A simple C-mount adapter, extension tube and objective lens system doesn't have to be that expensive to achieve better results than the tomlov. We used to buiId application specific optical systems like this all the time when I worked in Machine Vision (metrology for robotics applications), and back then it was Firewire or GigE visions cameras like the Allied Vision Guppy sensors, but these days a Raspberry Pi High Quality Camera + Zero 2W would make an excellent headless WiFi camera host, which you could plug a monitor into, if a big screen is needed. This industrial optical component 'lego' approach is the perfect half way house between buying commodity consumer kit and buying a full on scientific/industrial microscope.
I was wondering about getting something like the Bysameyee shown in this video which had the better image sensor, and modifying the optics. But I may have access to some higher quality Keyence sensors from work, from disused machine vision applications, which are intended more for macroscopic viewing and computation, but may work better with commercial lenses
Unless Keyence have gone proprietary since I last worked with them @@SixteenTonesStudio, they may be C or CS mount sensors anyway. They may even have decent Sony IMX sensors in them too. I'm rather out of the loop now though, I haven't needed to do any optical alignment work for well over a decade now.
@@IntegerOfDoom Sure.. But most people by now should know that stuff in that price range, ESPECIALLY by unknown brands, probably have lower specs than stated. So, as long as something that is 10 bucks actually does what you need it to do then the specs dont matter as much as the price. And lets be real here, while Chinese brands as a whole TEND to overstate their specs US companies do it too.
What I did was get a trinocular simulfocal microscope from China which is basically a generic Amscope and then added a generic usb/hdmi imager. Total cost was less than $300 and the results were extremely good. I adapted it to a cheap articulating Vesa monitor stand using 3d printed parts.
Great video! It's bugged me for at least 20 years that manufacturers (even the ones that aren't random names from Amazon) like to obfuscate and miss-sell their products based on marketing. When digital cameras first came out we had the huge MP claims, only for them to be 'interpolated'. The only reason to do that is to con people. These days it's fields of CCTV cameras and dashcams claiming to be 1080p or 4K, when in reality they're all 480i or 720p. It seems you get what you pay for, but only within bracketed amounts!
There are too many dumb people, that falls for it. That's the problem. I have had it so many times people who claim for example that their cheap phone can film in 4 K or even 8 K - and it can be a hard time to explain that even if the frame size in the files is 3840 x 2160 or 7680 x 4320 pixels, doesn't mean the camera is able to film in that resolution. Same with many other products. Many of us have probably seen those ridiculous 3 million volt tasers or stun guns on Amazon or Ebay. But a friend of mine (which I didn't even had a discussion with) got surpriced when my BMPCC 4k gave much more detail and sharpness and dynamic range than the 8 k HDR, his phone claimed to have. In many other cases, the sellers also don't obviously lie in the spec, but rather give the specifications under conditions that's unacceptable, unspecified or impossible to reach during normal use. For example speakers/headphones or even microphones are sold everywhere, that's claimed to have a frequency responce from 20 Hz to 20 kHz, but have no given tolerance limits for how much variations is allowed within that range - which makes that info useless (it's output or sensitivity could as well be down by 20 dB at the ends of that range - making it's practical useful range much less). Another example is power components - for example transistors. The current handling capability put on sellers sites, is often given at 25°C case temperature and maximum heat dissipation at the same time (which is impossible to reach, unless active cooling is used or ambient temperatures is very low - active cooling is usually not worth the added cost, maintentance and noise. It will often also reduce overall efficiency of most systems, as it takes energy to run). At least those comes with data sheets that show more relevant data, that can be checked before buying.
10 years ago I got one of the microscopes like you show in the opening clip and it was fantastic. It had really good image quality and a good sensor, really nice optics for something that cost $15. Then I broke it and tried to repalce it, I purchased 4 more which looked identical and they were all completely garbage...
I used to work with COB assembly factories in mainland China in the past decade. Most of the bonding machines were ASM520 series. The magnifiers equipped were used to locate the bonding pads. I would suggest to have a look at such cameras as well. Thanks very much !
An important parameter is resolution, being the distance between two points that look like two points rather than one. Magnification without resolution just makes the fuzzy blob appear bigger. Also, always try to use an in-image size-bar with clear markings as to what size and units it is, like "5 um" (ideally the mu symbol) so it doesn't matter what size the final printed image ends up being.
Dynamic Range is FAR FAR FAR more important.Dont get me wrong resolution is handy but with lighting dynamic range is much more important to eliminate glare when usiung flux etc
That's also my thinking. That's why with the "toy-scope"s I tried out I always tried to measure what was actual real-life distance between two pixels on the final digital image (of course, provided the image is in-focus, clear, etc). If I photographed a 0.5mm test ruler and ended up with crisp image of it spanning over 50pixels, then no matter how I view it, it's 10micrometers per pixel and I won't be able to even tell things apart from each other of anything smaller than 15-20micros, and if I want to see any actual features then I can forget about looking at things less than, say, 100-200micros (that will map into 10-20pixels in this example, who's gonna tell it was a sonic sketch on a 10x10.. a pointy ear would be probably 1 pixel tall). Having these x/y pixel distances (because sensor may have uneven pixels, and aspect ration doesn't have to be 1:1), then I could do some math - video sensor has this height and this width, this many pixels vertical and this many horizontal, I could calculate single pixel size on the sensor (sometimes it's even given in specs), and then real-life x-y pixel distance to on-sensor pixel size should give the true magnification ratio of the device. But then.... what I care in the first place wasn't the magification, it was how small features I could tell apart, and that first simple distance-to-pixels check was totally enough :) "Mag:200x" looks great on the video, but to be honest, I would LOVE to see a scaling ruler with "|| 1.0um" marker instead. It's so much more informative than 50x or 200x.
The ruler used by the author had its markings 10 micrometres apart. This was stated right at the beginning of the video. It is quite easy to take the image of the ruler and expand it in a graphics software until it becomes possible to count the individual pixels per 10 um.
Yeah honestly this entire comparison test is a bit absurd from the start to suggest a 10$ and 1000$ scope could possibly be the same then comparing shaky hand held, over lit images while clearly ignoring the zoom features dismissing them as Digital zooms while never demonstrating such. He cut the video off on the one before the zoom could be shown making me feel this entire video has ulterior motives of some sort. Its just kinda useless all in all
Regards from Ecuador, SouthAmerica. I really enjoyed your video and are very thankfull you took the time to make it. Although I purchased the least expensive one, I am happy to learn its capabilities and weaknesses. I mostly use it for inspecting, desoldering and soldering SMD components for ECUs and TV sets (and inspect my gray hairs). Keep up the good work, my friend.
Nice comparison, but I suggest that you compare the magnification when looking at the images at the same pixel magnification. Even if the "8 MP" and "16 MP" images show the same field of view than the 640x480 images, you could scale them to a much larger size without loss in quality. That being said, of course "x times magnification" is of course only an advertisement trick, because you could just take your 640x480 picture and project it to a wall and you get gigantic "magnifications". So an additional, valuable criterion for your comparison would be: how many µm per image pixel, or what is the diameter of sonic in pixels.
I think you could check one possibility of a hidden magnification step in those cheap toy-microscopes. Long time ago, I have bought a, hm, say, microscope, called "Supereyes A005+" which boasts up to 500x and 5MP. It looks like pen, a bit longet, and a bit thicker pen. It has a similar build - tube with roller and the inner optics slide up and down as you roll. It's much thinner than your $9 microscope though. It wasn't exactly cheap, but costed way less than a real one. Opinions were mixed - many comments claimed it to be a scam and not real 500x, but some actually provided important insight: the thing has TWO focus points when you roll. The first one, say, position 0-95% of rolling, is the low-mag part. Optics are mostly inside the tube. That's where you get lets say, up to 100/200x. But if you roll it all up to vicinity of 100% (optics slided down as much as possible, almost sliding out of the device) then you might be able to catch a very tiny spot of good focus again. The first lens will be like 1 or 2 millimeters from the inspected object, almost touching it. I like to joke that it's pressing its video sensor against the object :D Quite awful working distance. I scratched a few objects that way with microscope's chassis. But it actually gave higher mag than the easier-to-use 0-95% slider positions. I'm not sure if it was really as advertised 500x though. I tried to measure it, and I'm pretty sure I remember it could produce resolution of the order of upto about 10 micrometers per pixel. No idea how that maps to 'times' metric.. Now, what I'm getting at is -- I've read that SOME of those cheap microscopes actually have the same feature. Is it worth checking with your lab? Or is Supereyes A00x/B00x worth trying out? Well, I'm interested, but viewers probably won't. It seems to be dying brand. If you would like to hunt for them, watch out the model numbers. Their specs vary greatly. The one I have is/was A005 with a plus. It's was advertised as different than A005 plain.
This is my experience with two of these scopes so far, too. There's a certain threshold you pass on the winding mechanism, where it doesn't seem to be crossing from optical zoom into digital zoom. Rather, things go out of focus and then back in again with better detail, as if there's some real change in the focal length or something. Edit: For example, I used one of these cheap scopes in the first section of its sensor range to photograph a dead fruit fly such that you could clearly make out its basic anatomy... but then, in the second section of its sensor range, I managed to take a photograph of another dead fruit fly where you could make out its individual compound eyes.
Indeed! there are two focus points with very different magnification! It looks like EvilmonkeyzDesignz did not test that? @EvilmonkeyzDesignz: can you please respond if you did?
I found a Cainda B10 microscope for about $30 that is a bit better than the cheapest ones. It looks quite similar, but the build quality is a bit better. It advertises 1440p resolution, but that is with 2x digital zoom so the sensor is actually 720p. I found it a good starting point if you want to avoid the cheapest ones.
Ah, the video I waited years for. I still own one of the cheapest one and it was quite useful. But due to USB 2.0 limitations, resolution and framerate could be calculated to be never satisfactory. I wish the comparison could be redone in the
Indeed, especially for digital microscopes. Magnification makes sense when you look through an eyepiece because it means that objects appear larger than they actually are when projected on your own personal eyeball. The magnification number is nearly meaningless when you project the image on a sensor and show it on a screen. Life hack: 10x your magnification by copying the image into paint and using resize.
They both matter. A higher resolution would make these clearer at any magnification, and optical magnification would increase said magnification without sacrificing clarity.
be me: an engineer who works for a very large military contractor that makes cutting edge rf equipment with insane integrated circuits and takes part in the r&d of said equipment. *uses the cheapest possible $10 digital microscope to troubleshoot boards*
Awesome review! I wish all reviews were this technical. I was waiting for you to count the horizontal and vertical pixels on the sensor to confirm the 4k resolution. ;p
I almost did 😅. I was going to stitch the the image sensor at 20x and then use a photo editor to help count the pixels, but I'm stitch is likely to fail due to the repetitiveness of the pixels. Always easier to find a part number and read a datasheet if possible :)
The Shirri microscope works great for identifying insects and insect larvae on leaves. Great introduction for the hobbyist, especially grade school to even high school students and adult citizen scientists. I could only use on my MacBook Air but not my iPhone or iPad.
Have to admit I did buy one of those cheap ones, but I didn't expect it to be all that great, simply because generally you get what you pay for! However, 20yrs ago when I first began purchasing stuff on eBay I bought a Pentax camera/microscope-adapter but never did use it on any of my Pentax film SLR cameras. Having bought a Pentax K-S2 DSLR a couple of yrs ago, I thought why not make use of the adapter, so I looked at what I could afford in the way of optical microscopes. Ended up using an eBay voucher to save almost $55AUD on a $249AUD Celestron Labs CM1000C Compound Microscope, which means I can watch a very good image on my PC's Samsung 32" QHD monitor, while operating my DSLR using the app on my mobile!
Thanks! I enjoyed the review a lot. I was in the same situation choosing for a microscope a couple of years ago and also did not get any of the low cost versions. But one has to admit that they are pretty cool devices given the price. Real optical microscopes have big advantages but having a flexible magnification range between 10 and 40x is also interesting to capture quick full size silicon die shots. This closes the gap between macro shot with a regular camera and high mag microscopy pictures. So in the end it depends on what you want to to…
Thank you for the comparison and views into the internals of these microscopes. I recently bought one of those very cheap ones and I was actually pretty impressed with the image quality. Sure, I'm not using it to inspect transistors on silicon but the max 100x magnification is ideal for reading numbers of these tiny SMD components and for checking soldering joints. So whether one is going disappointed depends on the expectations one has before buying, and of course your video helps to manage them. If one buys a hobby telescope, thinking to get images like those produced by Hubble, it's going to be a major disappointment, but seeing the bigger moons of Jupiter or Saturn though one of these, pinpricks that they may be, can be equally rewarding. Regardless, the performance that the vendors are advertising are just as misleading as the "4800 DPI scan resolution" of the 300 DPI flatbed scanners of decades ago. Mega resolution through software interpolation should be forbidden in advertising.
Precisely, i don't solder much but the cheap usb "microscope" has been invaluable with some microsoldering I've done lately, alsp great for inspecting joints in general, and recording or screenshotting it, and it doesn't take up much space on my small table either.
Yeah, a cheap one that I got that seems better than these cheap ones is perfect for smd soldering and other electronics uses. It can see the details well of even tiny LEDs.
I 3D printed an adjustable stand to my cheap microscope and when I make Microcapture Plus full screen I can make a human hair 0.8mm become 40mm on my 32" 2560x1440 screen, I'm happy, considering the price.
On that last scope that you said you liked-- but the LED's can't turn off. You could simply cut the wire to the LED and wire in a simple switch and mount it on a through hole in the case. It would make a cool mod video
This was the only high quality review/ roundup of cheap USB microscopes in 2023 that I've been able to find! Good info, and sadly what I expected, mostly tech companies iterating over older, cheap imaging & support chips to produce sub-$40 toys. My interest is to buy a wide-field digital or optical trinicular microscope for a soldering station, that could magnify easily down to detailed SMD level, but without breaking the bank. Haven't found that yet :(
I guess the real question is, does the Tomlov represent best of the best at the price or not. It'd be interesting to know more about the electronic options around ~200$
The theoretical maximum magnification for a light microscope is 1600 - 2000x magnification, this is set by the laws of physics (the size of wavelength of light). Only GOOD microscopes will be able to even vaguely approach these numbers, if it's cheap and says anything over 400x, it's a lie! Good video, thanks for the reviews!
I'm more interested in a digital ocular pickup for my spotting scope, but I must admit I've been very intrigued [& extremely leery] of this digital wonders, so I'm very happy to have found your review!
also looking for something for astrophotography. they sell the mp sensors in boxes but they cost so much for so little mp. i tried slapping a cell phone to the telescope but focus was an issue. there has to be a middle ground someplace. i guess i could try removing the lenses from a cell phone but im not sure id get it to focus at all.
project: disassemble the iPhone 6s camera, convert it to a USB camera and replace the camera of that poor quality microscope to improve it. do it please
I love this... I appreciate a good old-fashioned side-by-side comparison... You put a good amount of work and thought into this.... Quality content... Well presented... You got my sub, brother.
Bloody brilliant review, only critism is that it would be good to fill that 160-500 price range, now I have a 4k full frame camera, wondering if I can fit extra magnification to my macro-micro (1:1) lens to exceed the 200x magnification?
I think the 1000X is the number from how big it is when seen on a massive monitor. If you hold the object next to the Monitors displayed image, you can invent a new magnification with bigger numbers, Ha-Ha. Typical advertising, don't use the word optical. :) I loved your video.
I have to say, these cheap microscopes are still definitely worth their while as novelties. I bought one, and it has definitely been fun photographing the head of a pin, the edge of a razor blade, the individual pixels of my smartphone's screen, the individual ink dots of color newspaper/magazine print, handwriting from a ballpoint pen, paper fibers, cardboard fibers, the grooves on a record, the fabric weaves on a woven phone charging cable, plant trichomes, my beard stubble... I could go on and on. They do fill a nice niche between macrophotography and proper microscopes, though it is a definite bummer that they tend to only have VGA sensors.
would you mind making a video about your AmScopes. why did you select those models and what to look for when choosing a scope? I am especially interested in your SM-4TZ-144A.
Thanks I was considering one of these cheap USB microscopes as an alternative to my magnifying glass and mag glasses for PCBs but held off as I couldn't find a trustworthy tests of the view /image qulity. For basic PCB tracing and soldering I think they would work OK.
great comparison! I have some cheap USB microscope for soldering. Since it has video delay, I decided to buy new one below 100, but now I see this is just a waste of money. Thank you!
Glad I could help! There are a lot of other mid-range microscopes that I came across after I started making this video. Perhaps I'll have to do another one 😁
@@EvilmonkeyzDesignz Would enjoy if you do, because this video did not really help in picking a good one, just which ones I should avoid. Something good/acceptable in the 100-300$ range would be awesome. But great video, saved me probably some money and trial and error time.
Really good comparision👍 amazingly well presented architecture of those image sensors by use of pro microscope. It was an amazing video to watch not just as a good comparision of cheap microscops but for sure to see how image sensors are build and that was the first time I saw them little tiny sensor pixels and all wirering around and under the circuit. Why most of people don't even realise and barely understand these techs which in my opinion all children should particularly understand the basics of electrics and electronics. Thanks!
Magnification is not an important spec for a digital scope, because any image can be infinitely magnified. The things that matter are resolution, dynamic range and depth of field, in that order. A 0x magnification scope (where 1 micron on the object is 1 micron on the sensor) is about as good as you can get. Displaying an image from a 1/4" sensor on a 25" wide screen gives 100x magnification. Displaying it on a 50" screen gives 200x.
We still are talking about optical magnification which is in effect in microscopes with digital cameras. Digital image magnification indeed doesn't matter.
@@KrotowX even optical magnification is misleading. As I mentioned, a 1x optical magnification on a standard image sensor is great, but it does not tell you what you can see. Only numerical aperture (& therefor resolution) tells you what can be resolved, regardless of magnification - optical or digital.
They dont tell you in the manual but you need to fully extended the lens and then tighten it by the threads. You can get about 5 or more inches of clearance with a better level of clarity as if camera were 2 inches away from the subject. 10:18 you can see its inscrewed but you can still do it without taking it apart fully. I just weaseled my fingers in and screwed it in snug because i noticed it was loose.
I got one of those Cheap USB Microscopes when I was in college for my Anatomy and Phisology class. It worked well enough to get photos of cells that I could share with the rest of the class.
Good info, thanks. The resolution reported in Windows is purely down to the configuration data that is configured to be reported over USB and this is entirely configurable therefore it is an indication of the claimed configuration, not the actual configuration. There is usually overscan on these sensors therefore the product sheet reporting a slightly higher resolution, for example 648 x 488 is just because there are 4 pixels overscan all around (you can even see these slightly differently configured sensor clusters when you zoomed in. This doesn't necessarily mean that 640 x 480 is the final resolution because in order to enhance the quality of the image it is possible for multiple images are taken and/or interpolation to be performed which boosts the raw resolution somewhat. For example, with interpolation it's quite valid, if a little disingenuous, to claim that a 640 x 480 sensor has an output of 1,280 x 960 pixels. Add in digital enlargement of the image and if Windows is informed by the device that it has a 2,560 x 1,920 resolution and the device buffers and enlarges a 1,280 x 960 interpolated image to 2,560 x 1,960 pixels and transfers this up then that's the image size delivered. Quality is a different matter of course. The difficulty in comparing these kinds of things is that the image sensor is a key factor in the "zoom" resolution and therefore the simplistic 100x zoom scale does not provide enough information because if both sensors are 640 x 480 (ish) but one is twice the size of the other, then what should the reported "zoom" level be? This is where comparisons such as these in this video are so useful as they show the actual results side-by-side
"lets look at this microscope under a microscope"... Excellent! I'm glad that I threw my USB microscope together out of old bits of junk... it's as bad as these, but at least I've only got myself to blame. ;)
I got one of the generic $9.99 digital microscope. It's good for basic scientific experiment and other stuff like looking at the fine detail of stamps or dollar bills. But I couldn't believe some of it is almost scamming you yet charge at higher price. I mean, all of them are scams in a way or 2 (except the first 2) but we already know the cheap products are likely scam.
These seem to be soldering station microscopes. High magnification is not appropriate. The microscope has to be matched to the task. What is the point of viewing a silicon chip? Working distance is missing from your review. Cheers.
I wouldn’t mind if they said it’s 50x or 100x and cheap and high quality… it’s the fact that they call it 1200x or 2000x etc that kills me… like… it’s not That bad if you are okay with 50x or 100x and are, for instance, soldering chips, not actually looking at chip dies, but let’s say you want 200x, 500x, 1,000x, plus+ and that’s why you buy it, and it just plainly Doesn’t do that, then yeah… just don’t lie… 😅
I wish you could review cheap but still expected to be good like the Andonstar A1 usb scope. And please add a few moments on how it should perform for soldering.
i got a similar scope to the cheap ones. the biggest problem is the software. mine has a wireless feature which only seems to work on phones, the pc version of the software only seems to support a usb connection. i was kind of hoping to use it for soldering tiny parts, and the wireless capability comes in handy there but it kind of defeats the purpose having to use a tiny phone screen instead of a huge monitor. im very farsighted and that was kind of the whole point. its only useful for inspecting work i did under a stack of magnifying glasses.
An absolutely professional production! I'm glad I didn't spring for the low cost "kiddie" microscopes! I have the most expensive model you presented but an earlier model. The biggest problem is the wobbly mount. It works great at lower power for positioning small surface mount parts.
Thanks! I was interested to see if they were essentially all the same stuff inside for different prices or if some were actually better than others. For some reason, you can't trust these manufacturers to give you the correct information.
I wondered about the true magnification of Carson Optical's 250x pocket microscope, I think it's only about 100x.Microscopes from 2000x to 7000x are usually for scientific purposes and precision fabrication can cost upwards of $70000, so a 1000x microscope cannot be cheaper 2000$
Those are all great points! I think that a normal person who's looking for a microscope might see these cheap USB microscopes and not realize that they aren't really getting what is advertised. Most people have no concept of what 1000x magnification should actually look like, so it's easy to get away with this sort of false advertising. There is a market for these, but they unfortunately aren't good for looking at silicon chips up close. I'll have to add the Carson pocket microscope to the list of microscopes to look at if I ever do another video like this 😁
Well actually Ive never seen a professional microscope with more than 1000X, going beyond that is futile due being at the limit of resolving power with white light. Dunno about super resolution microscopes like STORM, STED and PALM but I bet they still have optical magnifications below 1500X the resolving power comes from the algorithms.
How close did u place the shiiri/oxbird microscopes to whatever you were looking at? We have one at work and I discovered if you put whatever you're looking at right at the opening of that clear plastic housing (imagine placing the end of the clear housing directly onto a document you are inspecting) you can run the focus adjustment all the way to one end (past where you think it should be) and you do get the increased magnification.
This is like checking out reptile scales in BladeRunner. I got a used cheepo microscope for $5 Canadian on local internet used goods. It is a 640x480, and you need it to be VERY close, but can get decent magnification. It is really in your way for working on stuff.
I use my (old) Iphone 7 plus camera, hooked up to a monitor via a adapter I had laying around to solder all kinds of stuff, such as HWKey’s on switch and such. Works like a charm, with comparable quality to the devices shown.
For electronic rework/soldering, you only need 10x-40x magnification... are there any USB based microscopes, true 4k/optical-zoom that you'd recommend? For example, one that can output video 1) wirelessly to a android/monitor receiver (Miracast/Wireless-HDMI) 2) Wired USB to latptop/tablet device 3) Wired HDMI Dual-lens for seeing depth.. and a large Field-of-View would also be nice. Unfortunately, the ones I've seen are very expensive, presumably because they have way too much zoom (130x-180x lens), or come with their own 10" display, or gimic features like remote-control, etc.
With this kind of digital microscopes the magnification is practically a meaningless number: marketing department can play with the numbers and make it the higher they want, even if the actual details captures by the optics+sensor stay pretty poor. Light intensity and uniformity may also make a lot of difference: I bet that if you manage to get the illumination of the top level microscope mounted on the cheaper ones, the chip images will improve considerably. A more meaningful evaluation is resolving power: roughly speaking, the ability to capture and separate fine details. That's where you may find the bigger, and most significant differences among cheap and top level microscopes. That's what the test microscope glass with 0.01mm lines is for, though an even finer grid may be needed to actually pin the magnitude of the differences. To be fair, even the cheapest microscopes performed pretty decently (for the money) on the test glass. 0.01mm grid lines were well separated, and quite sharp (at least, the difference is not that much evident on a YT video). A finer test glass should make their limitations much more evident, but stability and light looks like their main limiting factor, nit the optics+sensor chain. Anyway, considering that one can use them lighthearthedly on the outside, in rough environments, connected to a smartphone, they may still be an interesting tool for many things.
Very detailed high tech stuff with microscopes for microscopes. Loved all parts of it. Keep up the good work. But for last Tomlov microscope in the comparison list, actual resolution should be higher, I mean 16MP should be like 5312x2988 or similar ?
So I do have one of those cheap ones, but I only use it for taking macro pictures for work instructions for operators at the factory I work at, specifically for like 0603 SMD components.
A video demonstrating the superiority of the AMSCOPE microscope compared to a host of stupidly cheap proposals. But for most mortals these (cheap proposals) are more than enough for hobbyist or even professional use. It would be more interesting to demonstrate which of these cheap models is the best or most functional. Most spectators were grateful.
Very interesting and informative video. One of my hobbies is electronics and repair and I've been considering one of these US scopes simply to examine some of the PCB's these days. I don't necessarily need to examine the chips. I found this video to be very useful. Nicely done. 👍
Would you recommend the Tomlov digital microscope for something like inspecting collectibles before grading? For instance, looking at vintage sports cards for potential damage on the surfaces, edges, centering, etc? The $699 microscope seems like overkill for my case. Thanks.
Thanks for buying all these microscopes and tearing them down. The cheap ones are good only as an alternative to magnifying glass/lenses. Especially for older people with diminishing eyesight and those who get headaches from straining eyes to see small parts.
yep I felt the TOMLOV DM201 was only 50x ..... real disappointment if you find anything else around that price point that is usable let us know , for now I am just mounting phone to microscope ..
The advantage of the stereo microscope (not binocular) is you have depth perception AND more depth of field - which makes a difference if you are doing repairs under the scope. The disadvantage is less magnification.
Excellent video. I have the Bysameyee microscope; when I zoom in with the wheel there are 2 different focus points, one with a lower magnification and one with a higher one. Is it possible you didn't scroll to the higher one? I don't know much about any of this, please excuse the terminology 😅
Really nice video. This comparison is really useful. I mean, I kinda imagined the cheaper ones wound not be so good but still. Might better buy some used metallurgical ones?
Quick question: I have a c-mount type digital microscope and I want to buy a barlow lens that will help me see a wider viewing range. I want to see more components on the board. Should I buy the 50x or 75x from a height of, say, 2 feet? By the way, this is a great review! so extensive. 👍
Do you mean 0.5x and 0.75x? Generally speaking the higher magnification, the closer you need to be to the work piece to focus. But it is also going to depend on other parts of your microscope. A 0.5x will give you half the magnification and presumably double the working distance? Assuming you aren't currently using a barlow that modifies your magnification. Although I could be wrong on that and maybe the working distance doesn't scale linearly with the magnification.
I bought a few a year ago to compare, and they all seemed to be the same (same magnification, same lights etc.), but some still had better image quality, so there might be different filtering being done. I didn't need the highest magnification, just something I can hook up to the PC that's portable. I bought some for 15, some for 25 and one for 40€ and the cheapest one had the best image. I would have liked something with 200X, but I also came to the conclusion they all are 100X, no matter what it says on the package unfortunately. Same goes for magnifying glasses, the chinese selles give you numbers like 10x and it is 2x in the end. Maybe there is a physical limitation to around 100x with such a small form factor?
I got a Tomlov last week but I got it for smd soldering and inspection and not for inspecting the chip dies. My first impression was a little disappointment but after using for a few hours my opinion changed to very impressed. It does better than what I wanted for the price I wanted to pay.
it depends what you want do with it. i got a cheap usb one to inspect solder joints on my side projects. for 10-15$ i'm happy with it. i use it so rarely getting a more expensive one wouldn't really do more. it does the trick and doesn't take up space when not in use.
I noticed newer wifi models have a different lens type - it cannot achieve even focus across its width compared with the type used in the older wired models.
18:55 I actually have this one. Used it for some smd work on a laptop and it definitely came in handy for inspecting my solder joints. Wasn't a bad price too
Interesting film. But not unexpected conclusion. I bought a so called 1-1200x 12 MP device for my mineralogical collection. It cost over £100 but came nowhere near the advertised spec. It seems the manufacturers of this type of junk feel they can get away with such false claims knowing people are unlikely to argue. In the end I got a good quality optical scope and a SLR camera adaptor to use with it.
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If I did another video like this, what other microscopes did I miss here that should be in that video? Let me know if you have other suggestions for aspects of comparing microscopes that you'd like to see as well. Thanks for watching! 😁
You missed the diy route.
You could purchase C/CS-mount or M12 mount lens. Its $10-$20 for those 100x-180x.
Then attached said lens to an old phone/dashcam/action cam bare sensor. You could already have it so you don't need to purchase, I've used an iphone 7 and it works.
Bare sensor is the keyword here, you need to pry off the LENS on those to have the bare sensor (squarish). You could hot glue or 3d print an adapter but it works.
Tomlov DM602 ??
I'd love to see some more intermediately priced models. Like below 300, 500, 1000, and so on.
It is no wonder, that microscopes for 10 bucks don't rock your world. And if it was sold for 10, it was maybe built for 3.
But it doesn't need to be the 50.000 bucks Keyence monstrosity to get good digital photos.
I bought a Celestron 44302-A branded version of the third (Shiiri) and fourth (Oxbird) years ago. It seemed to be a no-name made USB device that was widely available under different names... you are right, the result is "disappointing", and is not really a microscope. It has it's uses for me, however it was barely worth buying.
A few years ago I bought Mustool G1200, which is also supposed to have 1200x magnification. It works great except for not ideal colour reproduction. I wonder if you could test that one, and see if it really is 1200x.
These cheap USB microscopes are actually pretty useful for servicing electronics and watches, also taking very little space when not in use. And these do differ in magnification. Less magnification is better as it's easier to position and focus. Their online descriptions are however all over the place, so you'll never know what exactly are you buying.
I started using these few years ago on microelectronic repairs, and they work just fine for some uses. When you need to improve the precision on your work, they can become insufficient, but that doesn't mean they are bad at all.
It depends much on what type of job you need to do, so maybe spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars on fancy high-end equipment just doesn't worth at all, because you can do the same job with a simple and cheap microscope. Don't you think?
@Cabeza492 Given my 60+ yo eyes, I have to disagree; mine just disappoints. How old are your eyes, for comparisons sake..?
@@Jah_Rastafari_ORIG I'm not saying that usb micros are the best option for professional use, just saying that for some uses they aren't that bad... As I said, I started working on microelectronics just 2 o 3 years ago with those micros... eventually I had to change it for a trinocular because I needed more precision and optic quality.
@jahrastafari7381 i'm 51 years old and i had this one ~100x microscope. For 8-12€/$ is best choice for many people.
Unfortunately they are not very good when you need to repair laptop motherboards or something larger because they either have no mount at all or are bolted to small table which pretty limit the usable area. Also due to diffraction and zoom artifacts it is difficult to see small IC and connector pins at most angles. Another drawback is low frame rate and data transfer speed where picture of observable area is a bit jerky and appear after some delay which become very annoying when you are soldering IC in LQFP-64 package for example. But yes, they are usable in simple cases.
I've just bought the exact same scope you show in your thumbnail and have to say that for board repair it's spot on. It cost me GB£16 and is ideal for repairing xbox controllers/laptops and similar. I'm a hobbyist repair person who does these things because I enjoy the job, helping other people is pretty good as well, and to spend upwards of GB£300 on a scope (for me) would be a ridiculous waste of money that I would never recoup.
TY, I am glad to see actual consumers mentioning the stupidity that is this video. I mean I for one am shocked the 10 dollar camera is not up to par with the thousand dollar one. So, honest question. He cut off all actual zoom footage here and never really demonstrated them at their full potential. What would you say its like. Do you get artifacts and grain at higher magnifications?
Was looking at those myself and thinking of getting one. 👍😊🇮🇪
thats what i got mine for. eyes need some help these days, circuits are getting harder to nose around in. microscope worked great and didnt even require 24/7 location tracking and bluetooth in the app.
@@seditt5146you only get one magnification and a focus 😂 pinch to zoom setup.
and yes a little lens corona on the images, not grainy really. and not much corona given the crappy toy plastic lenses involved. my telescope is worse than this with its pricey lenses.
its good enough for me.
if i needed a $1000 scope i would only be comparing it to the 10,000 versions. im happy handing over the $20 for the cheap thing that fits its purpose. basic magnification.
Can u see microorganism liek parasite or bacteria??
Another option, if you have a C or CS mount camera (such as the Raspberry Pi High Quality Camera, with it's 12.3MP Sony IMX477R sensor) is just to buy the optical components you need for your use case. A simple C-mount adapter, extension tube and objective lens system doesn't have to be that expensive to achieve better results than the tomlov.
We used to buiId application specific optical systems like this all the time when I worked in Machine Vision (metrology for robotics applications), and back then it was Firewire or GigE visions cameras like the Allied Vision Guppy sensors, but these days a Raspberry Pi High Quality Camera + Zero 2W would make an excellent headless WiFi camera host, which you could plug a monitor into, if a big screen is needed.
This industrial optical component 'lego' approach is the perfect half way house between buying commodity consumer kit and buying a full on scientific/industrial microscope.
this is really cool thanks for the info
MVP level info right here
I was wondering about getting something like the Bysameyee shown in this video which had the better image sensor, and modifying the optics.
But I may have access to some higher quality Keyence sensors from work, from disused machine vision applications, which are intended more for macroscopic viewing and computation, but may work better with commercial lenses
Unless Keyence have gone proprietary since I last worked with them @@SixteenTonesStudio, they may be C or CS mount sensors anyway. They may even have decent Sony IMX sensors in them too. I'm rather out of the loop now though, I haven't needed to do any optical alignment work for well over a decade now.
@markbooth3066 Hey Your information helped me a lot, thank you! Do you know of any example videos about this? I want to learn more about it.
For the price range,those cheap usb microscopes are worth and does the job
yes and if I want something I can put in a backpack thats what im looking for.
If its cheap BUT works for what you need it for i dont see an issue.
Ay it like we all got grands to blow cus I know I haven't 😂
@@IntegerOfDoomyeah because _only_ Chinese companies ever lie about anything 🙄
@@IntegerOfDoom Sure.. But most people by now should know that stuff in that price range, ESPECIALLY by unknown brands, probably have lower specs than stated. So, as long as something that is 10 bucks actually does what you need it to do then the specs dont matter as much as the price.
And lets be real here, while Chinese brands as a whole TEND to overstate their specs US companies do it too.
@@IntegerOfDoomBecause that's a Tchaina only thing right?
Miss-selling like this is basically fraudulent yes they are cheap but also a scam.
What I did was get a trinocular simulfocal microscope from China which is basically a generic Amscope and then added a generic usb/hdmi imager. Total cost was less than $300 and the results were extremely good. I adapted it to a cheap articulating Vesa monitor stand using 3d printed parts.
I feel this is the best way then just upgrade camera as tech improves
Great video! It's bugged me for at least 20 years that manufacturers (even the ones that aren't random names from Amazon) like to obfuscate and miss-sell their products based on marketing. When digital cameras first came out we had the huge MP claims, only for them to be 'interpolated'. The only reason to do that is to con people. These days it's fields of CCTV cameras and dashcams claiming to be 1080p or 4K, when in reality they're all 480i or 720p.
It seems you get what you pay for, but only within bracketed amounts!
Even smartphones I think still include digital zoom, which is the first thing I disable on any camera. Also a lot of the post processing is terrible.
There are too many dumb people, that falls for it. That's the problem.
I have had it so many times people who claim for example that their cheap phone can film in 4 K or even 8 K - and it can be a hard time to explain that even if the frame size in the files is 3840 x 2160 or 7680 x 4320 pixels, doesn't mean the camera is able to film in that resolution. Same with many other products. Many of us have probably seen those ridiculous 3 million volt tasers or stun guns on Amazon or Ebay. But a friend of mine (which I didn't even had a discussion with) got surpriced when my BMPCC 4k gave much more detail and sharpness and dynamic range than the 8 k HDR, his phone claimed to have.
In many other cases, the sellers also don't obviously lie in the spec, but rather give the specifications under conditions that's unacceptable, unspecified or impossible to reach during normal use.
For example speakers/headphones or even microphones are sold everywhere, that's claimed to have a frequency responce from 20 Hz to 20 kHz, but have no given tolerance limits for how much variations is allowed within that range - which makes that info useless (it's output or sensitivity could as well be down by 20 dB at the ends of that range - making it's practical useful range much less).
Another example is power components - for example transistors. The current handling capability put on sellers sites, is often given at 25°C case temperature and maximum heat dissipation at the same time (which is impossible to reach, unless active cooling is used or ambient temperatures is very low - active cooling is usually not worth the added cost, maintentance and noise. It will often also reduce overall efficiency of most systems, as it takes energy to run).
At least those comes with data sheets that show more relevant data, that can be checked before buying.
@@Speeder84XLhelpful info...thank you!
10 years ago I got one of the microscopes like you show in the opening clip and it was fantastic. It had really good image quality and a good sensor, really nice optics for something that cost $15. Then I broke it and tried to repalce it, I purchased 4 more which looked identical and they were all completely garbage...
I used to work with COB assembly factories in mainland China in the past decade. Most of the bonding machines were ASM520 series. The magnifiers equipped were used to locate the bonding pads. I would suggest to have a look at such cameras as well. Thanks very much !
how did u escape china
@@CleoKawisha-sy5xt not quite escape l.A. 😂 but i see a lot of chinese out in the world, nobody ever leaves america do they? :p
An important parameter is resolution, being the distance between two points that look like two points rather than one. Magnification without resolution just makes the fuzzy blob appear bigger. Also, always try to use an in-image size-bar with clear markings as to what size and units it is, like "5 um" (ideally the mu symbol) so it doesn't matter what size the final printed image ends up being.
Dynamic Range is FAR FAR FAR more important.Dont get me wrong resolution is handy but with lighting dynamic range is much more important to eliminate glare when usiung flux etc
That's also my thinking. That's why with the "toy-scope"s I tried out I always tried to measure what was actual real-life distance between two pixels on the final digital image (of course, provided the image is in-focus, clear, etc). If I photographed a 0.5mm test ruler and ended up with crisp image of it spanning over 50pixels, then no matter how I view it, it's 10micrometers per pixel and I won't be able to even tell things apart from each other of anything smaller than 15-20micros, and if I want to see any actual features then I can forget about looking at things less than, say, 100-200micros (that will map into 10-20pixels in this example, who's gonna tell it was a sonic sketch on a 10x10.. a pointy ear would be probably 1 pixel tall). Having these x/y pixel distances (because sensor may have uneven pixels, and aspect ration doesn't have to be 1:1), then I could do some math - video sensor has this height and this width, this many pixels vertical and this many horizontal, I could calculate single pixel size on the sensor (sometimes it's even given in specs), and then real-life x-y pixel distance to on-sensor pixel size should give the true magnification ratio of the device. But then.... what I care in the first place wasn't the magification, it was how small features I could tell apart, and that first simple distance-to-pixels check was totally enough :) "Mag:200x" looks great on the video, but to be honest, I would LOVE to see a scaling ruler with "|| 1.0um" marker instead. It's so much more informative than 50x or 200x.
The ruler used by the author had its markings 10 micrometres apart. This was stated right at the beginning of the video.
It is quite easy to take the image of the ruler and expand it in a graphics software until it becomes possible to count the individual pixels per 10 um.
Yeah honestly this entire comparison test is a bit absurd from the start to suggest a 10$ and 1000$ scope could possibly be the same then comparing shaky hand held, over lit images while clearly ignoring the zoom features dismissing them as Digital zooms while never demonstrating such. He cut the video off on the one before the zoom could be shown making me feel this entire video has ulterior motives of some sort. Its just kinda useless all in all
@@seditt5146* to you.
Regards from Ecuador, SouthAmerica. I really enjoyed your video and are very thankfull you took the time to make it. Although I purchased the least expensive one, I am happy to learn its capabilities and weaknesses. I mostly use it for inspecting, desoldering and soldering SMD components for ECUs and TV sets (and inspect my gray hairs). Keep up the good work, my friend.
Nice comparison, but I suggest that you compare the magnification when looking at the images at the same pixel magnification. Even if the "8 MP" and "16 MP" images show the same field of view than the 640x480 images, you could scale them to a much larger size without loss in quality. That being said, of course "x times magnification" is of course only an advertisement trick, because you could just take your 640x480 picture and project it to a wall and you get gigantic "magnifications".
So an additional, valuable criterion for your comparison would be: how many µm per image pixel, or what is the diameter of sonic in pixels.
That's definitely a great idea. I'll have to do that comparison if I do a second video like this.
I think you could check one possibility of a hidden magnification step in those cheap toy-microscopes. Long time ago, I have bought a, hm, say, microscope, called "Supereyes A005+" which boasts up to 500x and 5MP. It looks like pen, a bit longet, and a bit thicker pen. It has a similar build - tube with roller and the inner optics slide up and down as you roll. It's much thinner than your $9 microscope though. It wasn't exactly cheap, but costed way less than a real one. Opinions were mixed - many comments claimed it to be a scam and not real 500x, but some actually provided important insight: the thing has TWO focus points when you roll. The first one, say, position 0-95% of rolling, is the low-mag part. Optics are mostly inside the tube. That's where you get lets say, up to 100/200x. But if you roll it all up to vicinity of 100% (optics slided down as much as possible, almost sliding out of the device) then you might be able to catch a very tiny spot of good focus again. The first lens will be like 1 or 2 millimeters from the inspected object, almost touching it. I like to joke that it's pressing its video sensor against the object :D Quite awful working distance. I scratched a few objects that way with microscope's chassis. But it actually gave higher mag than the easier-to-use 0-95% slider positions. I'm not sure if it was really as advertised 500x though. I tried to measure it, and I'm pretty sure I remember it could produce resolution of the order of upto about 10 micrometers per pixel. No idea how that maps to 'times' metric.. Now, what I'm getting at is -- I've read that SOME of those cheap microscopes actually have the same feature. Is it worth checking with your lab? Or is Supereyes A00x/B00x worth trying out? Well, I'm interested, but viewers probably won't. It seems to be dying brand. If you would like to hunt for them, watch out the model numbers. Their specs vary greatly. The one I have is/was A005 with a plus. It's was advertised as different than A005 plain.
This is my experience with two of these scopes so far, too. There's a certain threshold you pass on the winding mechanism, where it doesn't seem to be crossing from optical zoom into digital zoom. Rather, things go out of focus and then back in again with better detail, as if there's some real change in the focal length or something. Edit: For example, I used one of these cheap scopes in the first section of its sensor range to photograph a dead fruit fly such that you could clearly make out its basic anatomy... but then, in the second section of its sensor range, I managed to take a photograph of another dead fruit fly where you could make out its individual compound eyes.
Indeed! there are two focus points with very different magnification! It looks like EvilmonkeyzDesignz did not test that? @EvilmonkeyzDesignz: can you please respond if you did?
Mine also does/has this.
I found a Cainda B10 microscope for about $30 that is a bit better than the cheapest ones. It looks quite similar, but the build quality is a bit better. It advertises 1440p resolution, but that is with 2x digital zoom so the sensor is actually 720p. I found it a good starting point if you want to avoid the cheapest ones.
Ah, the video I waited years for. I still own one of the cheapest one and it was quite useful. But due to USB 2.0 limitations, resolution and framerate could be calculated to be never satisfactory. I wish the comparison could be redone in the
Resolution is the performance benchmark for microscopes, not magnification.
Indeed, especially for digital microscopes. Magnification makes sense when you look through an eyepiece because it means that objects appear larger than they actually are when projected on your own personal eyeball. The magnification number is nearly meaningless when you project the image on a sensor and show it on a screen. Life hack: 10x your magnification by copying the image into paint and using resize.
They both matter. A higher resolution would make these clearer at any magnification, and optical magnification would increase said magnification without sacrificing clarity.
be me: an engineer who works for a very large military contractor that makes cutting edge rf equipment with insane integrated circuits and takes part in the r&d of said equipment.
*uses the cheapest possible $10 digital microscope to troubleshoot boards*
lol, you are lying through your teeth.
I watch a lot of YT and this was the best video I have seen in a while - great content, well presented. Thanks
Awesome review! I wish all reviews were this technical. I was waiting for you to count the horizontal and vertical pixels on the sensor to confirm the 4k resolution. ;p
I almost did 😅. I was going to stitch the the image sensor at 20x and then use a photo editor to help count the pixels, but I'm stitch is likely to fail due to the repetitiveness of the pixels. Always easier to find a part number and read a datasheet if possible :)
The Shirri microscope works great for identifying insects and insect larvae on leaves. Great introduction for the hobbyist, especially grade school to even high school students and adult citizen scientists. I could only use on my MacBook Air but not my iPhone or iPad.
Have to admit I did buy one of those cheap ones, but I didn't expect it to be all that great, simply because generally you get what you pay for!
However, 20yrs ago when I first began purchasing stuff on eBay I bought a Pentax camera/microscope-adapter but never did use it on any of my Pentax film SLR cameras. Having bought a Pentax K-S2 DSLR a couple of yrs ago, I thought why not make use of the adapter, so I looked at what I could afford in the way of optical microscopes. Ended up using an eBay voucher to save almost $55AUD on a $249AUD Celestron Labs CM1000C Compound Microscope, which means I can watch a very good image on my PC's Samsung 32" QHD monitor, while operating my DSLR using the app on my mobile!
I use the 4k cheapo one to do quick fixes on boards without using a microscope, a 1080p TV is a good screen.
For $9.99, just amazed by so many chips on the board! For hobby project, definitely worth trying!
Thanks, great video. I wonder what would happen if you unsolder "OLD" and solder "NEW" on the cheapest ones.
Thanks! I enjoyed the review a lot. I was in the same situation choosing for a microscope a couple of years ago and also did not get any of the low cost versions. But one has to admit that they are pretty cool devices given the price. Real optical microscopes have big advantages but having a flexible magnification range between 10 and 40x is also interesting to capture quick full size silicon die shots. This closes the gap between macro shot with a regular camera and high mag microscopy pictures. So in the end it depends on what you want to to…
Thank you for the comparison and views into the internals of these microscopes.
I recently bought one of those very cheap ones and I was actually pretty impressed with the image quality.
Sure, I'm not using it to inspect transistors on silicon but the max 100x magnification is ideal for reading numbers of these tiny SMD components and for checking soldering joints.
So whether one is going disappointed depends on the expectations one has before buying, and of course your video helps to manage them.
If one buys a hobby telescope, thinking to get images like those produced by Hubble, it's going to be a major disappointment, but seeing the bigger moons of Jupiter or Saturn though one of these, pinpricks that they may be, can be equally rewarding.
Regardless, the performance that the vendors are advertising are just as misleading as the "4800 DPI scan resolution" of the 300 DPI flatbed scanners of decades ago.
Mega resolution through software interpolation should be forbidden in advertising.
Precisely, i don't solder much but the cheap usb "microscope" has been invaluable with some microsoldering I've done lately, alsp great for inspecting joints in general, and recording or screenshotting it, and it doesn't take up much space on my small table either.
Yeah, a cheap one that I got that seems better than these cheap ones is perfect for smd soldering and other electronics uses. It can see the details well of even tiny LEDs.
May be if you attach them to a 80" TV then the magnification can be 2000x
I 3D printed an adjustable stand to my cheap microscope and when I make Microcapture Plus full screen I can make a human hair 0.8mm become 40mm on my 32" 2560x1440 screen, I'm happy, considering the price.
On that last scope that you said you liked-- but the LED's can't turn off. You could simply cut the wire to the LED and wire in a simple switch and mount it on a through hole in the case. It would make a cool mod video
This was the only high quality review/ roundup of cheap USB microscopes in 2023 that I've been able to find! Good info, and sadly what I expected, mostly tech companies iterating over older, cheap imaging & support chips to produce sub-$40 toys.
My interest is to buy a wide-field digital or optical trinicular microscope for a soldering station, that could magnify easily down to detailed SMD level, but without breaking the bank. Haven't found that yet :(
I guess the real question is, does the Tomlov represent best of the best at the price or not. It'd be interesting to know more about the electronic options around ~200$
When you compare the size of the original object to the size on your computer screen, the magnification can be anything.
The theoretical maximum magnification for a light microscope is 1600 - 2000x magnification, this is set by the laws of physics (the size of wavelength of light). Only GOOD microscopes will be able to even vaguely approach these numbers, if it's cheap and says anything over 400x, it's a lie!
Good video, thanks for the reviews!
I'm more interested in a digital ocular pickup for my spotting scope, but I must admit I've been very intrigued [& extremely leery] of this digital wonders, so I'm very happy to have found your review!
also looking for something for astrophotography. they sell the mp sensors in boxes but they cost so much for so little mp. i tried slapping a cell phone to the telescope but focus was an issue.
there has to be a middle ground someplace. i guess i could try removing the lenses from a cell phone but im not sure id get it to focus at all.
project: disassemble the iPhone 6s camera, convert it to a USB camera and replace the camera of that poor quality microscope to improve it. do it please
So the $10 one is the best value for money?
I love this... I appreciate a good old-fashioned side-by-side comparison... You put a good amount of work and thought into this.... Quality content... Well presented... You got my sub, brother.
Bloody brilliant review, only critism is that it would be good to fill that 160-500 price range, now I have a 4k full frame camera, wondering if I can fit extra magnification to my macro-micro (1:1) lens to exceed the 200x magnification?
I think the 1000X is the number from how big it is when seen on a massive monitor. If you hold the object next to the Monitors displayed image, you can invent a new magnification with bigger numbers, Ha-Ha.
Typical advertising, don't use the word optical. :)
I loved your video.
The world is beautiful, but there are people who make it more beautiful and easier
Thank you
It would be great if we could just upgrade the sensor on them.
I have to say, these cheap microscopes are still definitely worth their while as novelties. I bought one, and it has definitely been fun photographing the head of a pin, the edge of a razor blade, the individual pixels of my smartphone's screen, the individual ink dots of color newspaper/magazine print, handwriting from a ballpoint pen, paper fibers, cardboard fibers, the grooves on a record, the fabric weaves on a woven phone charging cable, plant trichomes, my beard stubble... I could go on and on. They do fill a nice niche between macrophotography and proper microscopes, though it is a definite bummer that they tend to only have VGA sensors.
i guess, if your into junk toys, salut
If you have money to burn on worthless toys then probably yes. But why not purchase better microscope then?
would you mind making a video about your AmScopes. why did you select those models and what to look for when choosing a scope? I am especially interested in your SM-4TZ-144A.
FFS i was hoping for a good quality 500x digital thing from amazon
Thanks I was considering one of these cheap USB microscopes as an alternative to my magnifying glass and mag glasses for PCBs but held off as I couldn't find a trustworthy tests of the view /image qulity. For basic PCB tracing and soldering I think they would work OK.
I have an Andonstar AD249S-M... would be nice to see in a future edition of this video.
great comparison! I have some cheap USB microscope for soldering. Since it has video delay, I decided to buy new one below 100, but now I see this is just a waste of money. Thank you!
Glad I could help! There are a lot of other mid-range microscopes that I came across after I started making this video. Perhaps I'll have to do another one 😁
@@EvilmonkeyzDesignz Would enjoy if you do, because this video did not really help in picking a good one, just which ones I should avoid. Something good/acceptable in the 100-300$ range would be awesome. But great video, saved me probably some money and trial and error time.
Really good comparision👍 amazingly well presented architecture of those image sensors by use of pro microscope. It was an amazing video to watch not just as a good comparision of cheap microscops but for sure to see how image sensors are build and that was the first time I saw them little tiny sensor pixels and all wirering around and under the circuit. Why most of people don't even realise and barely understand these techs which in my opinion all children should particularly understand the basics of electrics and electronics. Thanks!
Magnification is not an important spec for a digital scope, because any image can be infinitely magnified. The things that matter are resolution, dynamic range and depth of field, in that order.
A 0x magnification scope (where 1 micron on the object is 1 micron on the sensor) is about as good as you can get. Displaying an image from a 1/4" sensor on a 25" wide screen gives 100x magnification. Displaying it on a 50" screen gives 200x.
We still are talking about optical magnification which is in effect in microscopes with digital cameras. Digital image magnification indeed doesn't matter.
@@KrotowX even optical magnification is misleading. As I mentioned, a 1x optical magnification on a standard image sensor is great, but it does not tell you what you can see. Only numerical aperture (& therefor resolution) tells you what can be resolved, regardless of magnification - optical or digital.
I bought one of those10 years ago. Still works. Does the job for my usage and it was cheap. Use it for closeups when repairing electronics.
They dont tell you in the manual but you need to fully extended the lens and then tighten it by the threads. You can get about 5 or more inches of clearance with a better level of clarity as if camera were 2 inches away from the subject.
10:18 you can see its inscrewed but you can still do it without taking it apart fully. I just weaseled my fingers in and screwed it in snug because i noticed it was loose.
I got one of those Cheap USB Microscopes when I was in college for my Anatomy and Phisology class. It worked well enough to get photos of cells that I could share with the rest of the class.
Good info, thanks.
The resolution reported in Windows is purely down to the configuration data that is configured to be reported over USB and this is entirely configurable therefore it is an indication of the claimed configuration, not the actual configuration. There is usually overscan on these sensors therefore the product sheet reporting a slightly higher resolution, for example 648 x 488 is just because there are 4 pixels overscan all around (you can even see these slightly differently configured sensor clusters when you zoomed in. This doesn't necessarily mean that 640 x 480 is the final resolution because in order to enhance the quality of the image it is possible for multiple images are taken and/or interpolation to be performed which boosts the raw resolution somewhat. For example, with interpolation it's quite valid, if a little disingenuous, to claim that a 640 x 480 sensor has an output of 1,280 x 960 pixels. Add in digital enlargement of the image and if Windows is informed by the device that it has a 2,560 x 1,920 resolution and the device buffers and enlarges a 1,280 x 960 interpolated image to 2,560 x 1,960 pixels and transfers this up then that's the image size delivered. Quality is a different matter of course.
The difficulty in comparing these kinds of things is that the image sensor is a key factor in the "zoom" resolution and therefore the simplistic 100x zoom scale does not provide enough information because if both sensors are 640 x 480 (ish) but one is twice the size of the other, then what should the reported "zoom" level be? This is where comparisons such as these in this video are so useful as they show the actual results side-by-side
"lets look at this microscope under a microscope"... Excellent!
I'm glad that I threw my USB microscope together out of old bits of junk... it's as bad as these, but at least I've only got myself to blame. ;)
THANK YOU FOR THE TIME SAVING INFORMATION !! 👍🏻
I got one of the generic $9.99 digital microscope. It's good for basic scientific experiment and other stuff like looking at the fine detail of stamps or dollar bills.
But I couldn't believe some of it is almost scamming you yet charge at higher price. I mean, all of them are scams in a way or 2 (except the first 2) but we already know the cheap products are likely scam.
These seem to be soldering station microscopes. High magnification is not appropriate. The microscope has to be matched to the task. What is the point of viewing a silicon chip? Working distance is missing from your review. Cheers.
These mini scopes actually have two focal lengths if you keep twisting the housing, you can get 200x
Yep. I agree. And if you remove the plastic end piece you can get sometime 3 focal points
@@scooterss2112 I've never tried it, interesting
I wouldn’t mind if they said it’s 50x or 100x and cheap and high quality… it’s the fact that they call it 1200x or 2000x etc that kills me… like… it’s not That bad if you are okay with 50x or 100x and are, for instance, soldering chips, not actually looking at chip dies, but let’s say you want 200x, 500x, 1,000x, plus+ and that’s why you buy it, and it just plainly Doesn’t do that, then yeah… just don’t lie… 😅
I wish you could review cheap but still expected to be good like the Andonstar A1 usb scope. And please add a few moments on how it should perform for soldering.
i got a similar scope to the cheap ones. the biggest problem is the software. mine has a wireless feature which only seems to work on phones, the pc version of the software only seems to support a usb connection. i was kind of hoping to use it for soldering tiny parts, and the wireless capability comes in handy there but it kind of defeats the purpose having to use a tiny phone screen instead of a huge monitor. im very farsighted and that was kind of the whole point. its only useful for inspecting work i did under a stack of magnifying glasses.
An absolutely professional production! I'm glad I didn't spring for the low cost "kiddie" microscopes! I have the most expensive model you presented but an earlier model. The biggest problem is the wobbly mount. It works great at lower power for positioning small surface mount parts.
Great video I liked how u opened each and every microscope
Thanks! I was interested to see if they were essentially all the same stuff inside for different prices or if some were actually better than others. For some reason, you can't trust these manufacturers to give you the correct information.
I wondered about the true magnification of Carson Optical's 250x pocket microscope, I think it's only about 100x.Microscopes from 2000x to 7000x are usually for scientific purposes and precision fabrication can cost upwards of $70000, so a 1000x microscope cannot be cheaper 2000$
Those are all great points! I think that a normal person who's looking for a microscope might see these cheap USB microscopes and not realize that they aren't really getting what is advertised. Most people have no concept of what 1000x magnification should actually look like, so it's easy to get away with this sort of false advertising.
There is a market for these, but they unfortunately aren't good for looking at silicon chips up close. I'll have to add the Carson pocket microscope to the list of microscopes to look at if I ever do another video like this 😁
Well actually Ive never seen a professional microscope with more than 1000X, going beyond that is futile due being at the limit of resolving power with white light. Dunno about super resolution microscopes like STORM, STED and PALM but I bet they still have optical magnifications below 1500X the resolving power comes from the algorithms.
Dyno-Lite makes a pretty good product.@@EvilmonkeyzDesignz
How close did u place the shiiri/oxbird microscopes to whatever you were looking at? We have one at work and I discovered if you put whatever you're looking at right at the opening of that clear plastic housing (imagine placing the end of the clear housing directly onto a document you are inspecting) you can run the focus adjustment all the way to one end (past where you think it should be) and you do get the increased magnification.
The ones they have a screen are essentially dashboard cameras...
Very nice review. Thanks!
The mount on the last one is for standard tripod.
TomLov's mount looks like a standard screw for a camera tripod.
This is like checking out reptile scales in BladeRunner. I got a used cheepo microscope for $5 Canadian on local internet used goods. It is a 640x480, and you need it to be VERY close, but can get decent magnification. It is really in your way for working on stuff.
These are mostly used for microsoldering, they work really well.
I use my (old) Iphone 7 plus camera, hooked up to a monitor via a adapter I had laying around to solder all kinds of stuff, such as HWKey’s on switch and such. Works like a charm, with comparable quality to the devices shown.
For electronic rework/soldering, you only need 10x-40x magnification... are there any USB based microscopes, true 4k/optical-zoom that you'd recommend?
For example, one that can output video
1) wirelessly to a android/monitor receiver (Miracast/Wireless-HDMI)
2) Wired USB to latptop/tablet device
3) Wired HDMI
Dual-lens for seeing depth.. and a large Field-of-View would also be nice. Unfortunately, the ones I've seen are very expensive, presumably because they have way too much zoom (130x-180x lens), or come with their own 10" display, or gimic features like remote-control, etc.
Thanks man i really enjoyed watching this. and it help me with the decision :D
With this kind of digital microscopes the magnification is practically a meaningless number: marketing department can play with the numbers and make it the higher they want, even if the actual details captures by the optics+sensor stay pretty poor.
Light intensity and uniformity may also make a lot of difference: I bet that if you manage to get the illumination of the top level microscope mounted on the cheaper ones, the chip images will improve considerably.
A more meaningful evaluation is resolving power: roughly speaking, the ability to capture and separate fine details. That's where you may find the bigger, and most significant differences among cheap and top level microscopes. That's what the test microscope glass with 0.01mm lines is for, though an even finer grid may be needed to actually pin the magnitude of the differences.
To be fair, even the cheapest microscopes performed pretty decently (for the money) on the test glass. 0.01mm grid lines were well separated, and quite sharp (at least, the difference is not that much evident on a YT video). A finer test glass should make their limitations much more evident, but stability and light looks like their main limiting factor, nit the optics+sensor chain. Anyway, considering that one can use them lighthearthedly on the outside, in rough environments, connected to a smartphone, they may still be an interesting tool for many things.
Very detailed high tech stuff with microscopes for microscopes. Loved all parts of it. Keep up the good work.
But for last Tomlov microscope in the comparison list, actual resolution should be higher, I mean 16MP should be like 5312x2988 or similar ?
So I do have one of those cheap ones, but I only use it for taking macro pictures for work instructions for operators at the factory I work at, specifically for like 0603 SMD components.
A video demonstrating the superiority of the AMSCOPE microscope compared to a host of stupidly cheap proposals. But for most mortals these (cheap proposals) are more than enough for hobbyist or even professional use. It would be more interesting to demonstrate which of these cheap models is the best or most functional. Most spectators were grateful.
Very interesting and informative video. One of my hobbies is electronics and repair and I've been considering one of these US scopes simply to examine some of the PCB's these days. I don't necessarily need to examine the chips. I found this video to be very useful. Nicely done. 👍
Would you recommend the Tomlov digital microscope for something like inspecting collectibles before grading? For instance, looking at vintage sports cards for potential damage on the surfaces, edges, centering, etc? The $699 microscope seems like overkill for my case. Thanks.
nice video tutorial it helps a lot to purchase good one
Thanks for buying all these microscopes and tearing them down.
The cheap ones are good only as an alternative to magnifying glass/lenses. Especially for older people with diminishing eyesight and those who get headaches from straining eyes to see small parts.
Remarquablement bien fait!
yep I felt the TOMLOV DM201 was only 50x ..... real disappointment if you find anything else around that price point that is usable let us know , for now I am just mounting phone to microscope ..
Thanks for all the work you did
The advantage of the stereo microscope (not binocular) is you have depth perception AND more depth of field - which makes a difference if you are doing repairs under the scope. The disadvantage is less magnification.
Excellent video. I have the Bysameyee microscope; when I zoom in with the wheel there are 2 different focus points, one with a lower magnification and one with a higher one. Is it possible you didn't scroll to the higher one? I don't know much about any of this, please excuse the terminology 😅
24:00 Of course you can turn off the 6 LEDs. Use the dimmer on the front below the buttons (the white line is a touch dimmer).
The cheap one this video tells you not to buy is actually very useful and works very well.
Really nice video. This comparison is really useful. I mean, I kinda imagined the cheaper ones wound not be so good but still. Might better buy some used metallurgical ones?
Quick question: I have a c-mount type digital microscope and I want to buy a barlow lens that will help me see a wider viewing range. I want to see more components on the board. Should I buy the 50x or 75x from a height of, say, 2 feet? By the way, this is a great review! so extensive. 👍
Do you mean 0.5x and 0.75x? Generally speaking the higher magnification, the closer you need to be to the work piece to focus. But it is also going to depend on other parts of your microscope. A 0.5x will give you half the magnification and presumably double the working distance? Assuming you aren't currently using a barlow that modifies your magnification. Although I could be wrong on that and maybe the working distance doesn't scale linearly with the magnification.
I bought a few a year ago to compare, and they all seemed to be the same (same magnification, same lights etc.), but some still had better image quality, so there might be different filtering being done. I didn't need the highest magnification, just something I can hook up to the PC that's portable. I bought some for 15, some for 25 and one for 40€ and the cheapest one had the best image. I would have liked something with 200X, but I also came to the conclusion they all are 100X, no matter what it says on the package unfortunately. Same goes for magnifying glasses, the chinese selles give you numbers like 10x and it is 2x in the end.
Maybe there is a physical limitation to around 100x with such a small form factor?
I got a Tomlov last week but I got it for smd soldering and inspection and not for inspecting the chip dies. My first impression was a little disappointment but after using for a few hours my opinion changed to very impressed. It does better than what I wanted for the price I wanted to pay.
it depends what you want do with it. i got a cheap usb one to inspect solder joints on my side projects. for 10-15$ i'm happy with it.
i use it so rarely getting a more expensive one wouldn't really do more. it does the trick and doesn't take up space when not in use.
I noticed newer wifi models have a different lens type - it cannot achieve even focus across its width compared with the type used in the older wired models.
18:55 I actually have this one. Used it for some smd work on a laptop and it definitely came in handy for inspecting my solder joints. Wasn't a bad price too
I actually liked the Annlov portable microscope......could come in handy for various applications on the job or research like botany
Interesting film. But not unexpected conclusion. I bought a so called 1-1200x 12 MP device for my mineralogical collection. It cost over £100 but came nowhere near the advertised spec. It seems the manufacturers of this type of junk feel they can get away with such false claims knowing people are unlikely to argue. In the end I got a good quality optical scope and a SLR camera adaptor to use with it.
Great video. Very well narrated and paced. I have often been tempted to buy one of these microscopes... Thanks for evaluating...
Thanks, I'm glad you found use from the video!
Really funny I received one two weeks ago and used it two days ago.
It helped me look at my failure in 480p x50 zoom. Nice