PRIME ENTERTAINMENT QX-5 Microscope | 
| Brand: Prime Entertainment
List Price: $199.95
Buy New: $72.41
You Save: $127.54 (64%)
New (15) from $72.41
Rating:  20 reviews
Platforms: Windows 98, Windows Nt, Windows Me, Windows Xp, No Operating System
Media: Electronics
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.6
Dimensions (in): 11.4 x 7.8 x 7.6
MPN: 900
Model: QX5
UPC: 851244000208
EAN: 0851244000208
ASIN: B0002HLKI2
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Features:
| • | Simply connect this microscope to any PC and watch as the tiny things are magnified to incredible size -- and displayed on your monitor | | • | Up to 200X magnification for seeing the tiniest particles and microbes, bigger than life | | • | Requires USB port |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
The QX-5 Microscope is the perfect educational tool for children who want to learn about their world! Attach this electronic microscope to your PC and let children explore the tiny, hidden parts of their world.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 15 more reviews...
 excellent piece of kit December 17, 2004
I. Harding
122 out of 124 found this review helpful
The Qx5 microscope is the natural follow-on from the Qx3. Used as a toy with the "child friendly" supplied software, it will load onto the latest machines; difficulties with the old Qx3 software on Windows XP Pro were not encountered with the Qx5. I have found this software to be intensely irritating for my use, but letting my two young nephews loose on my computer I was delighted to find that the whizzes, zips and boings the program generates during its natural operation freed me to be elsewhere in the house without fear that my young guests had given up on the microscope and were trying to sabotage my machine in ways available only to the very young. Not that I need have feared: a simple walk around the local park produced more than enough samples to keep them delighted until dinner. An excellent Christmas game can also be knocked out with the Qx5 and a laptop by wandering around the house, taking magnified snaps of the decorations and furniture, then challenging guests to identify the objects. (Print thumbnails and you can have a dozen people wandering around different parts of the house peering at ornaments.)
However, I have not bought two new Qx5s to supplement the Qx3s I already have just to play games. These `toys' are truly excellent scientific instruments. They allow for rapid inspection of small components, provide good images for presentations, and an image of a graticule can be used to calibrate distance per pixel, providing simple distance and area measurement. These images can be fed to image-processing packages for colour-dependent area measurements and other techniques. Contact angles of droplets on surfaces can also be measured from these images, with the 60x magnification matching the best droplet size. The improved pixel count of the Qx5 gives markedly better resolution of crystal morphology and the more intense LED illumination at last makes 200x magnification generally workable. The rectangular grid of pixels on the old Qx3 has been corrected to a square grid meaning circles are now the same number of pixels across as they are high (rather than 10% fatter). They can be used to monitor and record movement because they collect movies as well as stills: with 15 frames per second (up from the Qx3's five) much faster events can be captured.
So what are the downsides? This is a souped-up Qx3, with a better webcam at one end and brighter light at the other, so in common with the Qx3 the optics are not perfectly matched. The focal plane for each magnification is therefore in a different position requiring re-focusing after every change, as well as producing occasional microscopes with one of their focal planes squeezed quite close to the microscope body. This can mean the plastic stand is at the limit of its movement and bouncing on the last tooth of the cog, or if you've built your own holder you may start bumping into the plastic shield around the light. The TWAIN driver is new, and has no light control, and there is no utility offered to control light separately from your Start Menu. It captures images on command, but then you have to select the image to pass it on to your graphics package - an unnecessary extra step for most applications. The automatic colour balance bleaches images of predominantly one colour, and with the bluish LED illumination, yellow seems to come off particularly badly. This is not true with the interface that opens for capturing movies, where all sorts of settings can come under the operator's control, but the driver (at least in XP Pro) is a Windows Driver Model (WDM) rather than Video For Windows (VFW), limiting your options to only more recent software, and the light is still not accessible.
Generally, however, I'm delighted with the improvements in image resolution and frames per second that the new camera and light offer, and for a price that seems lower than the Qx3 commanded until the very end of its commercial life, these `toys' are extremely good value for anyone who wants to peer at small things through the eye of the twenty-first century.
Great fun indeed! June 29, 2005
Thomas N. Brogan (United States)
19 out of 23 found this review helpful
My wife bought me this microscope for Father's Day. I use it to inspect and take pictures of the edges of knives I sharpen. It's brilliant and the software loaded up onto Win2000 without a hitch. When our daughter is older, she'll be using it to explore the teeny parts of the universe (and hopefully inspecting edges she sharpens, too!).
My daughter loves it! May 2, 2005
S. Crane (Corvallis, OR)
15 out of 17 found this review helpful
My daughter rec'd this for christmas, and LOVES it! She is 9 years old and likes to go on 'nature walks' to gather specimens to look at and take pictures of... She has a great interest in nature, expecially rocks and plants - so this is the perfect toy for her.
I wish it had come with an instruction manual, but it's simple enough to use that we were able to figure it out and get it working in less than 30 minutes. the software is easy for her to use and she can hook up and get started all on her own. She uses it less often now, as is to be expected - but it has more to do with not being able to use our (only) computer than lack of interest. overall it's one of the most entertaining toys she has and will be used for a long time.
More than I hoped for July 27, 2005
Karla Thomas
15 out of 16 found this review helpful
I bought this microscope to help introduce 'natural science' to my almost 3 year old. He had been playing a bit with toddler software but would lose interest. Since buying this (and we have to leave setup at all times!) my son is not only fascinated with looking at things (the stuff he wants to look at! dead earthworms, onion skin, leg from a dead spider, every feather) but his computer skills are really developing. He loves the software that comes with it (graphics type for 'art' and making your own movies) and handles it like a pro. The only fault with this is it did not include slides (for $90 you'd think they would include a few) - I am currently purchasing some - cool water experiments here we come (I think I have as much fun with this as my son!!)
Bought it to enrich the kids but I love it too September 21, 2005
J. A. Edwards (Los Angeles, CA USA)
14 out of 15 found this review helpful
I just received this item last night and after just one evening of use I can already tell both the kids and I will have a blast with it. The optics, lighting, and overall performance of the microscope are SURPRISINGLY good. The supporting software is also very straighforward, functional, and kid-friendly. As others have pointed out there is a strange lack of instructions that leaves you feeling initially clueless (there is a "Help" feature accessible through the software) but the overall usage is intuitive enough that it wasn't really missed. Also, some of the webpages that I've seen indicate that you need 4 AA batteries but this is not true. (Maybe the earlier model needed it?) I very much recommend this product for your budding scientist (and yourself!)
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