Celestron 44104 is a sturdy (with rubber feet), all metal, ready to use out-of-the-box intermediate-level compound microscope for biologists, students, home users, hobbiests, collectors, and researchers with 500x magnification power.
The specimen is illuminated with bright LED bulb which means you can use Celestron 44104 comfortably even at night time. If at lower resolutions you feel that the light output is too much, you can always turn it down a notch thanks to the iris diaphragm and Abbe condenser. LED, in contrast to regular light bulbs, do not get hot even after hours of prolonged continuous use. If you prefer, you can also just use the mirror that comes with this heavy-duty microscope.
You can move the stage with horizontal- and vertical-axis knobs for precise positioning of the slide along the stage’s milimetric markings. That’s a feature a lot of entry- and intermediary-level microscopes do not have. The fine and coarse focusing knobs offer reliable focus control.
The 10x and 12.5x eyepieces, 4x, 10x, and 40x objective lenses provide excellent magnification and really sharp images due to superior optics and generous depth of field. As you’d expect from a microscope of this quality, the lenses are fully-coated high-quality glass, not plastic.
To accommodate the impatient gift-receiver, this compound microscope comes with five ready-to-use sample slides for your instant enjoyment and a five-page user’s guide.
The only easy assembly Celestron 44104 requires is the LED light source (if you prefer it over the standard mirror) and the objective lenses.
You can easily expand your viewing options by buying a digital objective so that you can project the image to a monitor. You can also buy and attach a 100x objective lens which would increase the total magnification power to 1,250x. At that level you can examine and marvel at even protozoa, sporozoa, bacteria, and amoebae.
The common consensus by all those who have used Celestron 44104: “A great value for the money.”
Celestron 44104 comes with the following technical specs:
- Fully-coated glass optics, all-metal body with monocular head
- Abbe condenser, iris diaphragm, and electric illuminator for light control
- 10x and 12.5x eyepieces and 4x, 10x, and 40x objective lenses
- Adjustable arm from 0 to 60 degrees provides comfortable viewing
- Five prepared slides and mechanical stage
