Amscope UTP200X003MP Digital 2MP USB Microscope, 10X-200X Magnification, Built-In Eight LED Light Source, Table Stand, Includes Software CD, Black

Works with win 10, which some people seemed to have trouble with. Zoom is very good, allowing great detail to be seen. Software that comes with it is one weak point: it uses compression and makes grainy stills. However any decent free camera software that has a lossless option solves that problem. The light is controlled by a knob on the cord, not software, but can be turned from bright to dim to off in a nice range. With the light off, external light needs to be very good. A cheap bright led flashlight helps when taking images of shiny things, like coins, where straight on light is reflected and hard to work with. The mount is cheap, difficult to keep it locked in place and grips the camera with a spring that is weak. Camera focus has small fingernail grooves and is easy to adjust very finely for good quality. It is only 640x480 so you cannot get a complete image of things larger than a quarter at high zoom. at low zoom with the camera far from the object, images are greatly reduced in quality. It excels at looking at a small area up close in high detail, and is good for looking at something live (moving it around to examine it zoomed in). I gave it 5 because of the price to function and value. I tried to list the negative aspects fairly as well so you know what you are getting into with this device. The software installer and other things make it clear that this is an older model, so be aware of this as well.

Amscope HCAM035 Review It's great! I wanted a big magnifier to see the edges of the knives and carving chisels I sharpen. This Amscope HCAM035 puts the image on my laptop screen as large as I could want. It came with no instructions but it did come with a mini-CD. On the cd is Amscope software for microscopes. It has a lot of functions for scientific and inspection applications, like measuring sizes and angles. More basic functions are capturing still photos and also videos. I installed the Amscope program from the disk, which does contain a manual for the software, started the program and plugged the camera into the USB jack. The software takes a while to load and then it searches for a recognized camera. It found mine with no trouble. When I clicked on the camera in the "camera list" (it was the only camera there!), the image showed up on the screen. The software is pretty easy to figure out for the basic functions like the image capturing, which is all I wanted, and I haven't tried anything else. I can also use VLC media player to view the stream from the camera. Click 'Media' then choose 'Capture device' and find 'HCAM00350KPA' in the dropdown list for 'Video device name'. Then click 'Play' and the camera image shows up. The camera has LEDs all around the lens to light up the subject. About a foot down the cable from the camera is a brightness control for the LEDs. There are 3 controls for the camera. One is a round, chrome button which logic tells me is to tell a program to capture a still or start/stop a video, but it did not tell the Amscope to capture the still. (I haven't tried video.) The second is a knurled knob or ring which is exposed through a window in the camera case. I'd call it a zoom control. It's also a sort of a focus control, too. With the camera mounted vertically and with the lens facing downward, if you rotate the ring to the left (the side with the button, which is just above the ring) the camera will focus from farther away and thus give lower magnification. If you rotate the rin ing gets closer to your own eye. The third control I would call the actual focus control. It's on the mount that holds the camera body on the stand. It moves the camera up and down about an inch to bring the object into focus after I get the camera height set roughly by moving the camera mount up or down the pillar. Resting the clear lens shroud on a ruler and adjusting the zoom/focus ring for best focus, 3/16 inch on the rule equals 640 pixels on the screen, which is about 8 inches across the screen image viewing window. The image window is calibrated in pixels. With the zoom control at minumum (maximum distance of lens to subject), the camera focuses at about 5 inches away. With the camera's clear guard around its nose almost touching a ruler, the 1/32nd inch marks on it are about 1 inch apart on my screen. The 'magnification' ring is set probably near the middle of its range. So I don't expect anything like the 200X I've seen claimed for other USB microscopes that look JUST like this one. I looked at a lot of them on Amazon and chose this one because it came with the stand and didn't cost much more than the ones with no stand. It gives a nice, clear 640x480 pixel image, which the software can magnify up to 400%. That doesn't seem very useful, but it's there. My camera has a label which says "Amscope HCAM035" and a serial number, but I didn't find it or anything similar on the Amscope web site. Of course there are limitations imposed by the price. It's only 0.3 megapixels, for example, and the stand flexes when you focus so you have to let go and then check to see if the focus is good, and readjust if not. An explanation of the controls would have been nice to include. The clear lens shroud keeps the lens about 3/4 inch away from the subject, which limits the magnification. I suspect that the shroud's design function is to make the lighting from the LEDs more even. The shroud does not seem to be removable. All in all, it's just what I wanted and I think it's a great buy. Definitely worth the thirty dollars it cost and maybe even a bit more. I recommend it.

Amscope makes some fine products, e.g. the M150 microscopes which are excellent value for the money. This product's, name UTP200X003MP would lead many to believe it has a 3MP sensor. In fact it is 0.3MP. 640 x 480 is likely useless to all but grade school kids. The plastic table stand mechanism is so wobbly that it is impossible to adjust magnification or focal distance without moving the camera far from its previous position. Additional note on Amazon fulfillment: the product, purchased as new, when opened, had clear signs of previous use including scratches and divots on the very soft aluminum cylinder, likely from someone wrestling with the stability issue described above, fingerprints and scratches on the base. The product description mentions a CD, which would not be needed since the software is on the Amscope site. I don't know if the fact that I received none is due to aan incorrect description or poor inspection of a returned item.

For the price, this is a great thing to have in case you need to examine some small thing or surface texture or finishing, or for fun/curiosity. The 'window' of stuff you can see is as small as a fine print character in a product. So about 1mm. You can definitely see some stuff not visible to the naked eye such as small debris, surface textures like printing defect, or clothing fibers with it. You can use it also for checking how sharp a blade is or for looking at small circuits or components. Sweat pores in skin, dust particles, or structural fibers in herbs/grass that look plain to the eye, are more examples. Depending on your need you may want something stronger. NOTE: I would strongly recommend keeping the dust cover intact. It almost works as an acryllic lens out of the box and is fine as long as you focus the thing properly. This lens will scratch up or get dirty very easily, but it comes already polished. Try to keep it that way. And there's more debris than meets the eye that could get in there.

I searched online for instructions because there is no cd. Nothing there. Still trying to figure it out. Cannot video or take photos. Cannot focus. What you get for $40.00. Darn it, I was really hoping!

I just bought this to look at postage stamps and couldn’t get it to work very well for that purpose. Probably my fault.