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You get about as much as can be expected for this price range.

Having the 4x objective (see Meade for example that lacks it) is very desirable. Having a 15x eyepice to give acceptable quality 600x avoids much need to go to the oil immersion lens. Almost everything works quite nicely. I would recommend not using the oil that comes with the microscope - cedar oil. This is an older type of oil that is slightly yellow and harder to clean than modern synthetics. Buy a tube of modern low viscosity immersion oil from Edmund Scientific or similar supplier. I found this oil works great at 1000x and 1500x with this microscope and cleans off reasonably easily with isopropyl alchohol.

I would definitely recommend purchasing this microscope, but also consider the similar featured Revelation III from LW Scientific. It has very slightly superior features, at a slightly higher price, from a company that specializes in microscopes (vs. Celestron, where their customer service knows almost nothing about microscopy; they are telescope experts).

There were a few tiny initial problems with the microscope. One eyepiece had a small optical defect near its periphery. Celestron immediately exchanged it for a flawless one. The iris diaphram came very slightly off center. There are adjusment screws to correct this. The alignment error is so small I haven't bothered fixing it. The color filters, by design, are placed right on top of the (nice) halogen light source. Compare the LW-Scientific model mentioned which has fileter holder and a few other light source advantages.

FYI:

The achromat objectives have the typical (no better, no worse) amount of spherical aberation at the outer edge, giving you about 2/3 of the field of view in sharpest focus for precisely flat specimen (e.g. quality blood smear). This is not a defect at this price range. Apochromat Plan objectives that ahieve 95+% freedom from spherical aberation can cost as much or more for one lens than this microscope costs.

This microscope uses standard lens sizes so it can readily upgrade to better eyepieces and objectives and acommodate kits for specialized microscopy (dark field, phase contrast, etc.), as well accepting standard through the eyepiece digital image capture accessories.

Actually, the oil is not to prevent the objective from scratching the slide, but instead to allow the slide to be viewed at that magnification at all. With that high a magnification the refraction will be very high, and a lot of light will escape before it ever gets to the eye (the light is going through glass, then air, then glass again, distorting its path greatly). The oil that is used for these microscopes has the same refractive index as the lens glass, and so light travels through it at the same speed and doesn't run off course.

This is in response to the post that there was an error with the 100x on the microscope. It's not that it's an error, but when you do magnifications at that level you have to do what's called oil immersion with the slides. This enables the lense to get close without being scratched. The instruction manual should say that. I promise I'm not making this up. I'm a biochem major with plenty of experience:-)

While checking this microscope it worked great until I got to the
100X objective. It cannot be focused at 100X. The objective hits
the slide on the stage and needs more travel distance to focus.
I placed a piece of transparant tape, with pen writings on it,
and the objective hits the tape and goes a little farther before
it focuses. Obviously, this is unacceptable! I called the
manufactor and they were unable to give me an explanation.
I hope this is just a defective unit and not a design defect.
I am returning the microscope and exchanging it for another
one. If it works then I will give it the highest grade possible.