Home > Consumer Reviews > Celestron 44104 500x Power Advanced Biological Microscope

The Celestron web site says that beginning in Jan 2009 the illuminator was upgraded to an LED system which is cool to the touch. I have not seen it, but it does address the heat concerns as LED's run at room temperature. I suppose that older inventory has the overheating issue. Be sure to check prior to purchasing.

I bought it for my 9 years old daughter ho wanted a "real" microscope and not a kid's plastic toy microscope. The quality of the image is very close to professional microscope (in fact the Celestron 44104 is a school grade microscope) and the mechanics very robust and smooth. It contains all the essential parts of a professional microscope - 3 objectives, 2 eye pieces, a condenser, macro and micro focus wheels, an XY moving stage, a bright LED source and a nice set of prepared samples (slides). I largely got for my money.

I bought this for my 12yo daughter who loves it! My husband is a research scientist and was impressed with the quality of the scope as well. I read the reviews about the electric light source heating up but we have had no issues with it other than it does not have a dimmer switch which would be ideal. It has always felt cool to the touch even after being on for an hour or more. It tends to be very bright though and my daughter prefers to use the mirror instead now because of it which works fine. Would definitely recommend this microscope for students.

We had some trouble viewing the slides at first,but with some help from the customer service we were able to figure it out. Great microscope for a great price!

First of all, let me reassure all of you that are wary of this microscope because of the reviews stating the light gets hot - they seem to have fixed this issue! I'm not sure what they were like before but this version uses a separate power supply that supplies a low DC voltage to the illuminator. Mine has been on for an hour and all parts are cool to the touch.

The rest of this microscope is as others have described: the eyepiece tube does have a few perma-specs that need to be cleaned out and eye relief leaves something to be desired. I was able to obtain a solid 100% field of view but you can expect your eyelashes to be touching the eyepiece on a regular basis. I don't see any reason you couldn't upgrade to better eyepieces if this is a concern to you.

All in all, even after reading the other reviews, I have to say I was still pleasantly surprised at the quality and solid feel of this microscope. All the knobs and dials provide nice feedback and proper resistance to hold adjusted positions. The stage is nice and large and has nicely marked millimeter scales. The base is sturdy and the arm reclines with just the right amount of tension to where it's not too difficult to maneuver yet holds in place nicely. Lens quality seems quite good for this price range. As with any optics, at higher resolutions the specimen gets slightly darker but even with the 40x objective, the entire field of view is nice and clear from edge to edge.

I would highly recommend this microscope to anyone looking for a high quality and reasonably priced student or hobby level microscope. The included slides are a nice bonus to give you something to look at when it arrives.