{"id":336,"date":"2021-01-23T19:24:28","date_gmt":"2021-01-23T19:24:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scopedetective.com\/?p=336"},"modified":"2021-01-23T20:54:23","modified_gmt":"2021-01-23T20:54:23","slug":"levenhuk-rainbow-50l-plus-microscope-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scopedetective.com\/levenhuk-rainbow-50l-plus-microscope-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Levenhuk Rainbow 50L PLUS Microscope [Full Review]"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
The Levenhuk Rainbow 50L PLUS<\/a> is a microscope designed and marketed for children and teenagers but provides sufficient quality magnification for viewing bacteria and other opaque specimen.<\/p>\n I bought this microscope because it was in my opinion the best for kids. Here’s a photo of my one straight out of the box:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The \u201crainbow\u201d in the title refers to the range of different colors you can choose \u2013 so you can get a microscope in your child\u2019s favorite color! <\/strong>I chose lime green.<\/p>\n The specifications of this microscope are good for a beginner scope and provide room for intellectual growth through intermediate and advanced level experiments. It has 64x\u20131280x magnification (400x is all you need for high school biology!) and both above and under-stage lighting for viewing a range of visible and opaque specimen. This magnification is good enough right through high school biology.<\/p>\n The monocular head with Barlow lens further improves user experience for children.<\/strong> A Barlow lens will generally make it easier to look through an eyepiece because you can look through the lens from a bit more distance. This also makes it good for people with glasses.<\/p>\n The two downsides of this model are that there isn\u2019t a mechanical stage (to be fair, no microscope at this price point has a mechanical stage that I know of) and there isn\u2019t a fine focus adjustment knob.<\/p>\n You can get by with coarse focus, but some comparable models at this price point do come with fine focus knobs. I would guess that they went without the fine focus knob to avoid overcomplicating the setup for children.<\/strong><\/p>\n My Overall Verdict:<\/strong> This is a good microscope for children and teenagers. I like it because:<\/p>\n So, I bought this microscope. You can also but the Levenhuk Rainbow 50L PLUS here.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n When reviewing microscopes, I usually start at the head and move down. That\u2019s how it\u2019ll work here, too \u2013 so let\u2019s start at the head!<\/p>\n Image: Personal Image<\/em><\/p>\n A lot of people balk at a monocular head and think a binocular head is somehow superior. It\u2019s not. Or at least, not for kids.<\/p>\n Binocular heads are just another thing to worry about when sharing a microscope with kids. They always want to fiddle and change them so they\u2019re comfortable. Children will also often feel like they can\u2019t see thorough binocular heads. So I always recommend a monocular head for children or even an adult who is sharing a microscope.<\/p>\n The head also rotates 360 degrees. This, again, is good for when you\u2019re sharing a microscope. Overall, I don\u2019t think a rotatable head is a deal breaker or deal maker for me \u2013 so this is much of a muchness.<\/p>\n Most compound microscopes come with two eyepieces \u2013 usually a 10x and 25x. This model has gone for one 16x eyepiece with a Barlow lens. The Barlow lens allows you to 2x this magnification, so you\u2019re effectively getting a 16x and 32x eyepiece on this model.<\/p>\n There are some advantages to Barlow lenses. Children tend to be able to use them better, and so do people with eyeglasses, because they\u2019re easier to look through. The one downside is that you don\u2019t get the lower-end 40x magnification that most other competing models offer, which can be good sometimes for examining rocks.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n There are 3 objective lenses on the Rainbow 50L PLUS. These are: 4\u0445, 10\u0445 and 40x. The 40x is also spring loaded (which helps protect it if you accidentally tap the lens against your slides.<\/p>\n Overall the 1240x total magnification is a little stronger than most competitors in this price point. At that magnification, you\u2019ll be able to see bacteria very clearly, and chances are you\u2019ll be spending 80% of the time working at a much lower magnification level for a better image.<\/p>\n The stage can be adjusted vertically but not along the X and Y axis. This means you\u2019ll have to move the slides manually if you misplaced them the first time (i.e. you can\u2019t \u2018scan\u2019 your field of view). This isn\u2019t a bad thing necessarily \u2013 you don\u2019t tend to get mechanical stages until you\u2019re up into the next price point. Check out the Levenhuk D740T for example.<\/p>\n You can move the stage up and down using the coarse focus knob on the microscope. There\u2019s no fine focus knob which personally I\u2019d much prefer to see, but I understand it might be a easier for young children to have just the one knob to work with and adjust.<\/p>\n One thing I did notice was that the coarse focus knob is a bit stiff, so children might need a hand working with it until they get their minds around it.<\/p>\n Overall, the stage and focus knobs are my least favorite features on this model, but not deal breakers, and the quality of these features are to be expected at this price point.<\/p>\n This model has both overhead lights and lights below the stage. The overhead lights are best for visible specimens like rocks, feathers and coins while the below stage illuminator is best for opaque specimen such as bacteria. There\u2019s a stage diaphragm for adjusting the amount of light that goes through the lens.<\/p>\n The microscope can be powered by AA batteries or being plugged into a wall.<\/p>\n Overall, these features are all to be expected for a microscope at this price point. So this is a pass \/ fail metric and here the Rainbow 50L gets a pass in my books.<\/p>\n The experiment kit that is included was really fun to work through. Here’s the kit:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n One thing I really appreciate about included experiment kits is you have something to look at immediately. Within about 5 minutes of getting the microscope out of the box, I was looking at this fly leg which was included on a prepared slide in the experiment kit:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n You\u2019ll be able to blast through the 5 prepared slides, then do another few experiments where you can prepare your own slides (blank slides included).<\/p>\n Overall, the included experiment kit was fun and really good value.<\/p>\n There is no camera included in this model, although there is a version (The D50L PLUS) which does have an in-built 2MP camera.<\/strong><\/p>\n Personally, I think if you’re keen on photomicroscopy this isn’t the microscope for you. It’s better to get a trinocular head microscope and a DSLR to microscope adapter, like I did with my Amscope T490B coupled with the CA-CAN-NIK-SLR adapter.<\/p>\n But for those who just want to take simple photos and don’t care about the images being the best quality, you can simply hold up a cell phone camera to the eyepiece of your Levenhuk Rainbow 50L PLUS, like I am demonstrating here:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n (The photo of the fly leg earlier in this article was taken using this method, to give you an idea of the quality you can get with a cell phone camera + microscope setup).<\/p>\n\n
Levenhuk Rainbow 50L PLUS Review<\/h2>\n
1. Monocular Head<\/h3>\n
2. Barlow Eyepiece<\/h3>\n
3. Objective Lenses and Total Magnification<\/h3>\n
4. Stage and Focus Knobs<\/h3>\n
5. Lights and Power Source<\/h3>\n
6. Included Experiment Kit<\/h3>\n
7. Photography<\/h3>\n