When you think of a microscope, you think of the kind of thing you used in school where you sliced thin bits of onion and placed them between two glass slides. Now while I wasn't expecting the magnification powers of something you attach to your phone to be quite as powerful, I was expecting a little more than what is essentially a macro lens.
It is a fun little gadget if you've got a spare $40 lying around but it's not something I would rush out to buy and I'm yet to find a really good use for it other than showing your mates the individual fibers of their clothes or the shape of their fingerprint. It's not headed for our list of the best microscopes any time soon.
Specification
Light source type: LED
Material: 200X with CPL
Colour: Black or white
Item Dimensions: L x W x H: 6.8 x 3.5 x 2.5 centimetres
Magnification maximum: 200 x
Brand: Apexel
Build and handling
The Apexel microscope has a universal clip-on attachment that enables you to slide the microscope into position over your front camera. It's a little fiddly to align but you can slide the microscope up and down in its holder to find where your camera is. I don't particularly like how the clip has to press down on your phone screen, I'd be worried about scratches, and using it with my Honor 50 it causes a message to come up that says "do not cover the top of the touch screen. Mistouch prevention enabled. Swipe twice to exit."
This message became very tiresome because it popped up every time my phone locked or I stopped using the camera and while it's not hard to exit that screen, for efficiency I'd rather not have to.
The device itself feels quite cheap and plasticky but the microscope does slide quite smoothly up and down its holder. There is a button on the front which turns an LED ring light on or off if you need a little more light, though it isn't very bright.
Performance
As I've said before if I was using the Apexel smartphone microscope with a better phone such as the iPhone 13 Pro, I think I would be a lot more impressed but when fully zoom in, the images aren't very clear. You also need to shoot using a tabletop tripod as it's so sensitive to camera shake which again makes it hard to take a really clear image.
However, considering it's so cheap and all you need is a phone, it is fun to use and you do get a lot more detail with it than a built-in macro phone lens, but I wouldn't go as far as saying this is a proper microscope.
It's uses are very limited and I can imagine it would get a bit boring after a while, especially considering the results from it aren't exactly mind-blowing.
Verdict
This is certainly more of a macro lens than a microscope and while I personally don't have much use for it, I can see why it would be fun to play with. I feel like the phone I used with it really let it down so I would be interested to see how good it is using one of the best camera phones. I think the design could do with a bit of a rethink, I'm not a huge fan of the clip attachment and even though it has rubber on the screen side it seems like a recipe for getting a scratch.
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