You know I love gadgets and techie toys so this post has to be no surprise for you, ha-ha. Back in March 2023 I bought a portable microscope gadget/toy from Aliexpress for $15 (including some pre-prepared samples to watch). The delivery was $2 so I am holding this cool little machine for a total of $17. Nowadays the same microscope costs 6€ and the samples cost 5€ (with a delivery rate of 5€), a total of 16€ which is around $17, pretty much the same, inflation hasn’t touched this gadget, ha-ha. I am sure you can find a portable microscope just like this one on websites like Amazon as well. This is what I found as of today on Aliexpress:

I tested it out on different surfaces with so many different objects and items. What I enjoyed the most was plants and plant parts.

I remember this warm Autumn day when I first grabbed it and went out on a walk to the park. I was filming the whole journey and the experiments that followed, click here to watch the video I made on YouTube: https://youtu.be/BDGbOFxsbsQ?si=1OzI_RPxJLvmL7t8

I gathered different plant parts like stems, twigs, flowers and leaves. I even found a leaf with what appeared to be tiny hatched insect eggs. I used all of those materials to experiment with the microscope. Let me share some of the pictures I took with you. For more, watch the video with the link above. Those kinda look like planets seen from a telescope, don’t they?

The microscope works with plain AAA batteries and on the package it states that it has a magnification of 60-200. I have no idea if those numbers are correct, but I think for such a small price, you get a useful gadget that does the job. I do enjoy this toy and I’ve used it a couple of times since I bought it. Can’t wait for my kids to grow up and be at least 6-7 years old so that I can show them how to play with and use this portable microscope. Hope they’ll be into science and technology, just like me.

I think this gadget is great for a classroom! It’s cheap, so it won’t be a problem buying 20 or 30, one for each student. Also, for elementary or middle school you don’t really need the best microscopes to make a point or to spark interest, so these are perfect, they do their job pretty well. Also great for a toy to play around with when you’ve got some extra time on your hands, or when you want to take the kids out to the park and do something meaningful.