Customer Reviews

Digital Blue QX5 Digial Microscope

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

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.

My son got this for his birthday and absolutely loved it. Immediately he was making movies and magnifying everything. He loves that it comes off the base to magnify just about anything that he can get close to the computer. He asked me if he could take it to school and share it with his class. His teacher loved that they could all gather around the computer and look at the images. It is even better in the classroom becasue she can verify that they are looking at the right things, and when students ask questions they can point to it on the computer screen instead of trying to explain what they are seeing through the regular lens. This is a great item for beginning to use a microscope and helping a child learn the ropes.

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!!)

This is a rather fun toy microscope that has a built in CMOS detector so that images can only be viewed via a Windows PC. The all plastic construction (including lenses) limits the accuracy of focussing and the on-screen image resolution is adequate rather than good. This microscope was originally marketed by Intel and built by toy manufacturer Mattel as the QX-3. Now Digital Blue have taken it on after Intel discontinued production. The QX-5 is an upgrade having 640 x 480 pixel resolution rather than just 352 x 288 in the original QX-3. Have a look at micro.magnet.fsu.edu/optics/intelplay for very detailed scientific description of the original QX-3 and advice on what to use it for. Every school in the UK was given one of these in 2002. Scientifically inclined youth (and school teachers) should also be very interested in the book `700 science experiments for everyone', published by UNESCO and available from Amazon for about a tenner.

I installed the QX-5 software under Windows XP Pro on a 1.2MHz Athlon PC and the software worked fine. The only downside is that the software changes the CRT screen refresh rate to 60Hz and doesn't switch it back to the flicker free 85Hz. So a trip to `Start, Control Panel, Display, Settings, Advanced, Monitor' is required to set the graphics back to their correct setting (check these before you run the software). Otherwise the software and USB microscope run very well. It comes with a small prepared `slide' (a cardboard and plastic array of things like insect parts) plus a reasonable archive of digital images which you can add to.

Once on the PC the 640x480 images can be manipulated and pasted etc, and it does time-lapse for things like crystal growth, and there's a fair bit of control of the time-lapse intervals from 0.1 second to 1 hour intervals. I have a QX-5 at home for the kids, but like most kids with microscopes they can get bored with it after running out of things to view - so web and book searches for ideas is useful. Note that you can also get pretty good hi-res images of things like nuts and leaves from a cheap flatbed film scanner (not the Lide type), and there's also the digital camera in macro mode, but this microscope is far more kid friendly and being very light it bounces well. The main microscope body can be detached from the stand to view things.

The QX-5 has not got the resolution of even a standard 'school' compound microscope though, largely because you see it all 'enlarged' on a large computer screen, it uses plastic lenses and has a low resolution detector (but you can share the view with friends). So you may find the QX-5 a real disappointment if you expect too much of it in terms of image quality. However it is rather fun to use and has transmission + reflection white LED light sources built in to view specimens. The software is also very kid friendly and the increased resolution over the QX-3 is very welcome. So overall, recommended for pre-teen budding scientists.

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!)

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.

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!).

This microscope is marketed as a "toy," but at the price you pay for it you deserve to get a decent piece of technology. The software that comes with it is ridiculously old. It does not even have a windows interface. It takes up the entire screen, can not be minimized, and changes your screen resolution. There is NO web interface, so it does not download latest updates, as you would expect from any other software written in the last 15 years.

There are minimal and cryptic controls on screen; no menus. I could go on about the user-unfriendliness of the software, but there is a more important point. It crashed my computer. Not just a simple shutdown; it was a crash that required a restore to last settings. After that, I should have known better, but we ran it again. It worked, but on the third attempt, it would not even start up. Time to uninstall, lose money on the return, and start shopping for a real microscope.

Save yourself the trouble and just don't buy it.

Believe it or not, this so-called 'toy microscope' can actually be used in a real research too. This gadget has been cited and used in the following publications:
- "Profiting from nature: macroporous copper with superior mechanical
properties"
- "An inexpensive microslab gel DNA electrophoresis system with real-time
fluorescence detection"
- "GASEOUS MICROEMBOLI SIZING IN EXTRACORPOREAL CIRCUITS USING ULTRASOUND BACKSCATTER"
- "Personal Cytometers: Slow Flow or No Flow?"
- "On-line low-volume transesterification-based assay for immobilized lipases"

When qualified using a features-vs-price ratio, this gadget would get a high ranking. Moreover, this 'cheap' toy is a perfect starting point to induce creativities among new science and engineering students, particularly in regions with limited resources.

Overall, this is a fun toy.

Software frequently crashes on Vista, but otherwise is really easy to use with some cool tools!
Focusing is a pain because--remember, this is a toy--cheap plastic knob doesn't function smoothly.

We've had zero luck using 200x in combination with the stage and illumination. I just don't think there's enough light. In hand-held mode, with auxiliary light sources, it's okay.

Optics, in combination with focusing issues, won't make this a great tool for plant cells and such, but we've found some pretty cool bugs that we wouldn't have seen with the naked eye. (Diagnosing mites in mason bee cocoons, etc.) I was hoping to use this to do some basic parasite tests (fecal floats) for my animals. Hold out for a traditional student 'scope, at the least, for anything like this.

We're keeping it since for the price, it's a fun toy even if we only really use it at 10x and 60x. If I'd bought it locally, though, I might be more predisposed to returning it and saving up for a better 'scope (even sans camera)...but it all depends upon what qualities you most need.

You'll need to pick up your own glass slides and cover slips elsewhere--dealers found on Amazon have been good to us!