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PRIME ENTERTAINMENT QX-5 Microscope from PRIME ENTERTAINMENT
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Our Editorial Review
Product Description The QX-5 Microscope is the perfect educational tool for children who want to learn about their world! Attach this electronic microscope to your PC and let children explore the tiny, hidden parts of their world.
Customer Reviews
Kids will love it Posted 08 March 2007
Nice resolution picture. Good magnification and brightness. Can take picture or video clip.
A very science nice toy Posted 27 January 2007
I bought this for my son's 7th birthday. He enjoys it very much. We found all sorts of interesting things to look at around the house and discuss.
Overall, it is a VERY good toy.
My main problems with it are:
1. Lightling is from a single direction, so its not uniform.
2. The resolution of the camera is OK, but not great.
QX-5 Microscope Review Posted 04 January 2007
I found it a handy device for certain magnification of items(I use it for coins). As all devices it has limitations, the plate area for placing items for magnification is too small by about a 1/4" for my use. The lighting control is not really manageable as appears. The biggest problem is the table will not stay locked in place very well causing constant readjustment. Even with these issues it has been very useful to me for the price paid. It would be nice to upgrade the next version with a couple of improvements.
Don't expect too much and you wont be dissapointed Posted 22 December 2006
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.
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