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Carson Z-Pix 26-130x Digital Zoom Microscope | Electronics

by Carson Optical

List Price:

$129.00

Available:

Usually ships in 24 hours

Sales Rank:

21,650st

FEATURES

26-130x magnification
includes Specimen base, 3 blank slides, 1 prepared slide, forceps, eyedropper, USB cable, CD ROM software
displays image on your computer screen
digital microscope and camera in one
weighs 8.8 oz.

EDITORIAL REVIEWS

Product Description
The zPix 200 from Carson Optical is a powerful Zoom Digital Microscope that displays the Magnified image right on your computer screen. The impressive 26x-130x Zoom Magnification allows you to see details of ordinary objects you never knew existed! Capture an image to keep using the built-in 1.3 megapixel resolution Digital Camera. You can even capture close-focus video! The MM-740 Zoom Digital Microscope is compatible with the following: Mac OSX 10.4 or later, Windows 98 SE, Windows 2000, Windows ME, Windows XP, Windows Vista. A USB 2.0 port is required.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 3.0 based on 10 reviews)

Pictures speak louder than words by Master Christian

2 Stars
September 24, 2009
Installation of the software was straight forward, except that only one of my 6 USB ports recognised the Microscope. Whilst the build quality looks good the image was poor. Whilst I have never had a digital microscope before, I understand that the image clarity will be poorer at higher magifications and under poor lighting. With this in mind I still feel that the image I am obtaining is totally unacceptable. Whilst I can view the slides, the image is blurred by two types of image noise - fixed and random. It results in detail being obscured and use of the microscope can be described as frustrating at best due to a poor camera. Nothing worse than knowing how good an image should look but not being able to see any detail! Better off with a cheap hand held lens in my opinion. I have contacted Carson who responded in good time (2 Days) to say the images I sent them were of the expected quality and that they do not consider the microscope to be faulty. My next question is how they can have a nerve to sell it. I don't believe that anyone who has used this digital microscope would buy one so I would advise all to avoid it. I have attached photos of the slides provided with the microscope so that you can relate to the image quality I am seeing and make an informed decision.

This product is excellent. by F. Leon

5 Stars
June 24, 2009
I bought this primarily to examine printed circuit boards, which it does great. Just what I needed and at a very good price. Built-in LEDs are nice.

A Collector's Dream by Collector4Life (Ohio)

5 Stars
May 20, 2009
As an avid coin & stamp collector I was looking for a product to help me view fine details of my collection. I was also interested in sharing my collection with others. The zPix from Carson fit the bill. With this digital microscope I have been able to see details of my coins & stamps that I am unable to see with the naked eye. This is a neat little item that I know I will get a lot of use out of. Set up was a breeze and I've been able to save and share images with my fellow collectors. The only negative aspect of the product is that you can't see the whole coin or stamp at once because of the high powered magnification. I didn't really mind because the details blew me away. A great buy for the price...

Extremely good value with quality optics for under $100 by kandoro (Northern California)

5 Stars
May 13, 2009
After reading the other reviews I quickly determined there are too many defective units or these reviewers simply haven't followed instructions...It seems the latter holds more merit... The included software seems quite adequate in automatically controlling exposure, led intensity, white balance and other settings...Plus there are plenty of manual controls to change brightness, hue, sharpness, exposure, white balance, etc...I consider the optics to be quite good considering the amount of magnification and having to transfer this image to a large computer screen...I printed up a few 8x10's and they were quite crisp...Of course I had done a little further color editing and sharpening of the original image... The still image natively saves at 1280x1024 .bmp or .jpg...I prefer the .bmp as the .jpg compression has been set very high and is not adjustable that I can find...Essentially the 1280x1024 .bmp files are 3-4mb while the same .jpg file is only 150-200kb...Too small for me... These images can be saved at even higher resolutions than the sensor provides but this is strictly digital interpolation so why bother at this level...Better software programs can manipulate the image much better after saving the original .bmp... While the camera has a manual button on the top for taking the still images you can also do it with a mouse click to prevent any unecessary camera movement...I much prefer the mouse when possible in a fixed setting... The software accepts more than one input and initially I had to change mine because the screen was blank...I suspect this is what happened to one of the reviewers who complained their's was defective...I also believe the quality and speed of the video card plays a big roll in performance here as well...In my 5 year old laptop the image adjustments could take a second or more but with my new quad core, 3 gig Ram, 512mb video card the changes were instant..I also believe the proper monitor resolution settings and color calibration profiling plays a major role in getting the maximum quality of this cameras images...I doubt the negative reviewers were using optimum settings... I haven't done any lengthly videos but the short clips I did were just fine...Saved in the basic .avi file...Again I believe the speed of the computer and video card are paramount in achieving optimum performance... Overall, I cannot recommend this unit highly enough for the price and the quality of images it produces...Of course I don't have any other digital microscopes to compare with but I've used dozens of digital cameras and DSLR's so I know a quality digital image when I see it...I also take into account this camera costs under $100...I think the reviewers who downgraded it simply hadn't read all the software instructions on what the camera can actually do and what it takes to get that done... I also find it ironic the cheaper sister unit MM-640 with a much smaller sensor is rated higher here at Amazon...To me this only confirms the reviews here on the MM-740 are mostly a result of improper instruction and not of inferior quality... Buy it and most importantly take the time to properly use and I think anyone would be quite pleased with the results...

Ideal fun gift for kids by auntie t (California)

4 Stars
April 17, 2009
I bought the zPix for my nephews 12th birthday. He is obsessed with "gross" stuff so I thought this would be perfect for him. He loved it. He used it to look at everything from dead insects to his many scars from all his falls off his bike. He made sure he saved the images to show to his little sister to gross her out.

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