Carson Zorb USB Digital Microscope with 35X Optical Zoom, Safari Green

by Carson

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 7 x 2.2 inches ; 8.3 ounces
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B001GIDW2S
• Item model number: MM-480G
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (45 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,201 in Camera & Photo (See Top 100 in Camera & Photo)
  • #10 in Camera & Photo > Binoculars, Telescopes & Optics > Microscopes > USB Microscopes
  • #93 in Industrial & Scientific > Measurement & Inspection Products
• Date first available at Amazon.com: March 4, 2009

Product Description

Color: Safari Green

The MM-480 zOrb from Carson Optical is a Digital Microscope with an integrated camera that displays the magnified image right on your computer screen. The impressive 35x Magnification (14" monitor) allows you to see details of ordinary objects you never knew existed! The built-in internal illuminator ensures a clear and bright image. The zOrb Digital Microscope comes in 3 colors: Surf Blue, Safari Green and Lava Orange. Capture an image to keep using the built-in 640 x 480 resolution digital camera. You can even capture close-focus video with the zOrb! The zOrb is compatible with Microsoft Windows 98SE, ME, 2000, XP, XP Service Pack 3 Upgrade, Vista and MAC OSX 10.4 or later. A USB 2.0 port is required.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fun product for children, works on our MacBook Pro, August 29, 2010

By 

Kathy (Oregon) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Carson Zorb USB Digital Microscope with 35X Optical Zoom, Lava Orange (Electronics)

Small enough for our children to manage, fun for spontaneous moments when your child just wants to look at things really close up. I wouldn't say this is a microscope for a serious scientist but it is certainly fun for curious children to explore their world. Great price and quite a durable product which has so far withstood almost a year of use and abuse by two children under 10 and two adults over 40.

The lights are too hot to use for snowflake pictures but it has been fun viewing for insects, rocks, postage stamps, fingerprints, leaves and flowers.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great for business (printing) and fun, March 30, 2010

A Kid's Review

This review is from: Carson Zorb USB Digital Microscope with 35X Optical Zoom, Lava Orange (Electronics)

I bought my original Zorb for Christmas from another source and fell in love with it. I work in the printing industry and it is a great tool to take to customers to reveiw printing types, defects and details that are difficult to see with a hand held loop. I have shown it to many in the business and have contributed to at least 100 of these being sold. (no Kidding!) As a personal tool, its great for kids, mine have looked at everything possible. I even bought one for my son's sciene teacher at school. Works with Mac and PC with no issues. Highly recommend it!

15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Attention Mac users. Stop and read!, June 15, 2011

By 

Lee S (Altadena, CA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Carson Zorb USB Digital Microscope with 35X Optical Zoom, Lava Orange (Electronics)

Carson Optical does not support Mac computers in any realistic way. They claim to support the Mac OS but that simply isn't true. Their products can be made to run in a more or less lame way on Macs but it isn't pretty. Their models MM-480 and MM-640 use a Sonix Quicktime component (SN9C201) which has long been known to crash iTunes 10 - Google something like "iTunes 10" and "Sonix" for numerous posts and an Apple technical bulletin on the subject. And though iTunes 10 has been out for almost a year as of this writing Sonix hasn't addressed the problem. Despite this Carson continues to claim that these products are suitable for Macs. They even offer a Snow Leopard driver which is how I decided that their stuff must be okay to run on my Macbook Pro. What a surprise to find that their Snow Leopard driver installs a component that's toxic to iTunes 10 and known to be so. How many Snow Leopard systems can there be out there that aren't running iTunes 10?

Furthermore, their latest model, MM-740, which is 'plug and play' and so doesn't need the Sonix QT component is still not a proper Mac device. While they supply a decent imaging app for Windows machines they supply none at all for your Mac. Instead they expect Mac users to run the microscope in the Mac app Photo Booth which is a kind of toy application for taking quick snaps and has no image adjustments whatsoever unless you count the goofy false color and funhouse mirror distortions it offers which are of course of no use in microscopy at all. It may be that there are other Mac image programs that would work better but Carson isn't suggesting any and they'd have to be found, tested and purchased separately.

After I bought an MM-480 I got in touch with Carson about the Sonix problem. Their technical representative said he'd never heard of it and that he'd research the problem. He got back to me a couple of hours later after consulting their "software guy" and the only advice he could offer was to revert to an older version of iTunes. Let's see...toy microscope or iTunes 10? Which would you choose?

All that said the hardware is decent and I have worked out an acceptable (to me) workaround. This won't be something the most casual Mac user will want to do but others might. Basically the problem with the Sonix QT component is that Carson's installer puts it in the root library so it's always loaded and ready to crash iTunes. The fix is to put it where it's only running when you're using your microscope but not at any other time. Here's how that's done.

1.Make a new user. I named mine Zorb.
2.Make a new folder in the new user library called "QuickTime"
3.Run the Carson installer
4.Move the Sonix component from the root "QuickTime" folder where the installer will put it to the new user "QuickTime" folder you just made.
5.Now when you switch to the new user the Sonix component will be active and you can use your microscope. When you're done using it put any pictures or movies you've made in the 'Public" folder and switch back to your usual user. The Sonix component doesn't exist in that user so it won't bother iTunes and your snaps and movies are there in the new user's public folder and available to be used within your normal user any way you want.

So, that's it. Carson makes decent hardware but if they're not willing to go to the trouble of making their stuff work on Macs in a way that's comparable in terms of performance and features to the way they work on Windows computers they need to stop implying that they do and clearly warn their Mac customers that they'll be getting an inferior product. I've gone to the trouble of writing this up in hopes that I can warn off unsuspecting Mac users and because I'm tired of companies that claim to support my computer in order to get my dollars but that are unwilling to either do what it takes to make that true or to be upfront about the problems.

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