Best USB microscopes
What is the best USB microscope?
Do you really need a cheap £20 USB microscope…..probably not, should you get one, most definitely, If you are measuring things in terms of fun, that is!
To our amazement you can have so much fun with a little inexpensive USB microscope, you can literally put whatever you want under it, and have it instantly transformed, as if by magic into a bizarre new world for you to traverse. Forget telescopes they are sooo 2000. 2020 is the year of the USB microscope.
USB microscopes are surprisingly fun and make great gifts, but they do also have a range of practical uses making them a really useful gadget to have in your arsenal.
Basically, you can put the most mundane thing under a USB Microscope like an old piece of cloth and it unlocks a whole new world of interlocking crisscrossed fibres all weaving in and out of each other in a perfect pattern, except for the odd rogue fibre jutting out and there. The fun gets even more exciting once you start getting adventurous viewing things like onion cells and insects. You can try whatever you want under the lens. It is like being given a key to a secret world that seldom few people ever see. The possibilities are endless so get out there and start exploring! It is also a useful educational tool and is great for getting kids interested and interacting with the world around them.
The fact that they can be connected to your PC via the USB port is a game-changer. You can see your images full screen in high definition in real-time, no more squinting down an eyepiece of a microscope only for someone else to twiddle with the focus knob and lose your beautiful image forever. With USB microscopes you can snap your image at any time and save your photos to your PC library. Your images or videos can then be viewed back any time or shared with friends and family.
They are surprisingly simple to use and all the microscopes we tested worked straight out of the box, due to there plug and play compatibility. There was zero setup time and we saw our first images explode onto the screen within a few seconds after plugging them in.
As well as being good for kids, dads will also want to get their hands on one. They are great to have in your workshop as they can be used to help you solder printed circuit boards (PCB’s). The magnification is great for working on any delicate tasks and takes the fiddliness out of working with small components. They are a useful little piece of kit that can be used in the home, garden or workshop. In this article, we decided to simply put 3 of the best selling microscopes available on amazon to the test head to head….to head.
The Veofoo USB Microscope
On its own this seems like a great microscope, the magnification of x200 does seem to unlock a whole new world of possibility and you can get some really nice shots with it. You will no doubt have a lot of fun with this microscope. But when you compare it to other £20-30 microscopes out there, they give you a lot more for your money.
The only advantage we found to this microscope over the others would be if you were wanting to examine something underwater or in a narrow hole. The microscopes IP67 rating means it is “dust tight” and protected against immersion in water for 30 minutes down to a depth of 1 meter.
The microscopes slender design means it can be inserted into a 12mm hole. If you were wanting to explore the underwater world then this microscope would be your best option, however, if you are doing most of your work on dry land then other microscopes do the job far better. Other microscopes on test had significantly higher levels of magnification and picture quality – for essentially the same price.
uk/dp/B07QLRDPBN?tag=blokecave0e-21
Diglife Digital USB Microscope
If you want the ability to do your magnification out in the field whilst exploring, then this would be the ideal choice for you. It has a built-in screen so you can instantly see what you are looking at, much like a conventional microscope. This means you will not need to bring another peripheral device with you on your travels. It has a micro-sd card slot, so you can save all your images and video files to the micro sd card and then view them on your computer once you get back to base.
You could use this microscope in a similar way to how you would use a digital camera. It is robust enough to take with you in your backpack and go off exploring the microscopic world. Once you get back home you can peruse through all your wondrous images from the micro SD card in glorious 1080p. It also has a USB cable port so it is capable of connecting directly to your pc if you so wish.
uk/dp/B07K43RBG8?tag=blokecave0e-21
Jiusion Original USB Digital Microscope
If you are wanting to do all your work from home, or at a fixed location like your desk or workshop bench, then this microscope is perfect for you. It easily connects to your device, be it a PC/laptop/tablet/iPhone or Android phone.
As soon as you connect the microscope to your computer you are instantly hit with a magnified image filling the entire screen. We recommend attaching it to a PC or Laptop for the full effect. A few focus adjustments on the turning wheel of the microscope and you have a perfect image ready to snap and save to your PC. This microscope along with all the others allows you to record video footage and save it to your library. You can take a guided microscopic video tour as you move your specimen around under the lens and record a short video clip.
This camera would also be suitable for any soldering work on PCB’s. The stand provided is good enough to get the odd bit of soldering done. However, if you were soldering a lot you may need to fabricate your own stand to meet your needs, which would not be too difficult as the microscope will fit snugly into a 35mm hole.
uk/dp/B07DRGR6LX?tag=blokecave0e-21
Conclusions
If you want to go underwater choose the……Veofoo USB Microscope
If you want the mobility to go out on an adventure choose the……….Digilife Digital USB Microscope
If you want to examine things in detail in a fixed location choose the……Jiusion Original 40-1000x USB Microscope
