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Babybgoode (soon turning 6) is getting well into science and I've always fancied one anyway so can anyone recommend me a good but not wildly expensive microscope - say up to £150ish.
Happy to go a bit higher is there's a marked improvement in quality.
The Carson handheld plastic ones, with led light, from amazon are surprisingly useful, up to 40x and you can take them in your pocket in the field to look at stuff in situ, and the USB digital ones from £20-40 will show you some amazing stuff. Pro kit is obviously better at holding stuff steady and getting smooth adjustments though.
Hitachi TM4000, excellent bit of kit.
Contact Helen at Brunel Microscopes, incredibly knowledgeable and they stock microscopes in all price ranges:
http://www.brunelmicroscopes.co.uk/
My son got one for Christmas that clips over the camera on a smartphone. This one, but many other similar ones are available. We had an old Samsung Galaxy S3 kicking around in a kitchen drawer so put it to use - it's bloody brilliant, 30x magnification which is enough to see droplets of sweat appearing from pores on your fingertips, hairs on the legs of spiders, great close-ups of dead flies,butterflies etc that we've found.
The best thing is that it's tiny so can be taken off on walks, bike rides etc to look at stuff wherever you happen to be.
The only downside is that it's directly attached to the phone so sometimes you have to hold the phone at an angle that's not ideal for viewing the screen. There are ones that you can just plug into the usb port of your phone/tablet (needs OTG compatibility) and the camera is on a short cable, which would be much better.
For the price, though, it's superb value.
It's also great for casting the screen to the TV and using it to show the kids the lice that are making their heads itch 😀