Best Digital Microscope With Screen

HI All,

Looking to purchase a digital microscope with a screen for close up examination of stamps (eyesight not so good) also with facility for taking stills.

Budget approx £200

Any advice/recommendations appreciated.

Steve.

If you Google celestron digital microscope, you should find one that connects to your computer. Comes with a handy stand. You should find one for way less than 100. I've used mine for many years and very happy with it,

Keep in mind most of these microscopes claim 200x - 1600x magnifications but mostly interpolate and do not magnify.

I have a Celestron with the built in display but find the image quality wanting. It is a digital camera and images are just screen grabs. It has an auto light feature so if you turn down light the camera compensates to add light (wish I could disable).

The 5MP video camera can be grainy and find you may need one with lighting at an angle rather than perpendicular to see texture. It has a feature to measure distances but if you use it be sure your platform is at right angle to camera. The platform (like a diving board) on mine slopes slightly toward to front so had to prop it up.

Not what you asked, but I love my Optivisor, quite useful now that my kids left home so can't get them to read small print for me. I have the light and the extra flip-down magnifier.

I bought a Tomlov 602 Pro last year (the same/identical model is sold under various other names on Aliexpress). It promised a 24MPixel camera and magnifications of up to 700, 200, 2000 (three exchangeable lenses).
The main intent was to use it to photograph stamps under long wave uv as all my other camera stuff has serious problems with color when stamps are illuminated under 365nm light.
What I got was:
-A very low end 1/3 inch Omnivision ccd chip with 4k resolution only.
-The true max. magnifications are 75, 30,180
-The chip is completely insensitive in the blue wavelength range, it has the worst color reaction of all my ccd-chips.

It is still very usefull to detect "small stuff" on stamps like plate flaws, scratches, layout marks, etc.
Overall, somewhat a disappointment buy. It was on sale for around $130 though The original price is almost $300 which, for a Chinathing, is way too high for what it offers.

For the longwave uv thing, I think I will have to get a >2000ASA digital camera one day that actually shows on its ccd chips what the eye sees

Thanks for sharing Dr. Kohler. I personally have no trust in AliExpress.

My recommendation of a celstron is based on getting a model and viewing through your computer, not an attached screen. This is a way to look for some smaller areas and take some still pictures of just that smaller area. There is nothing better than a scanner if you want to capture the entire stamp.

thanks everyone for the helpful info.

Ted Talks Stamps recently reviewed a microscope, but I didn't catch the cost. You can find his videos on YouTube.

I use a 20x carson pocket microscope. $16 with the clip to attach a cell phone. It has a longwave uv light, not as useful as shortwave. You don't need crazy high magnification to really see the detail. Most people these days have a cell phone with a good camera and screen.