Bresser Junior 7-97x Digital Handheld Microscope

This is a pocket digital microscope for children aged 8 and over, Bresser's figure, sold under two names, Junior and Youngster, with the same body, screen and lens. There's no eyepiece; a 2-inch screen on the back shows the picture, the lens on the front magnifies 7x to 34x optically, and a digital zoom carries on to 97x. It lights the subject from above, so a child points it at a leaf, a coin, a stamp, a fingertip or an ant and sees the surface, with nothing to prepare.

It records 1280 by 720 photos as JPG and video as AVI and plays them back on the screen. A USB-C cable charges the built-in battery and copies the files to a computer. Bresser also quotes the view on a 32-inch monitor as up to 435x optical and 1240x digital, which is the same picture spread across a bigger screen rather than extra detail, as our magnification guide explains.

The body is plastic, 10 by 10 by 5.5 cm, light enough to hang round the neck on the strap in the box, and Bresser lists coins, stamps, biology and botany as the uses. Six prepared slides come with the Youngster edition; the Junior lists prepared slides without a count. Either way, a child will get more from the garden, the kitchen and a coin jar than from the slides, since the light falls on the surface rather than passing through.

The Youngster 100-500x uses the same format at 100x to 500x with 18 MP photos, and our handheld microscopes page lists the stand and USB models for older children and adults.