Equally suited for teachers, students, quality control inspectors, specialized professionals, and microscopy enthusiasts, the HamiltonBuhl Scout STEM Digital Microscope eschews convention by completely removing the ubiquitous eyepiece and instead gives you a direct high-speed USB 2.0 computer interface, so you can view specimens directly on your monitors. Viewing your specimens in this fashion makes it easier for multiple people to see the same thing at the same time while giving you the ability to capture 640x480 AVI video and 1600x1200 JPEG still images and save them right to your computer for later use and reference. When viewing on 17" 1600x1200 resolution monitors you can achieve magnifications of 100x, 200x, 300x, 400x, 500x, 600x—if your monitors are larger or smaller, your magnifications will be scaled up or down accordingly. Changing magnifications is as easy as simply rotating the objective wheel in either direction, and a single focusing knob ensures your views remain tack sharp.

At low power you can inspect circuit boards, rocks, and gems, and as you dial up the magnification you can reveal the hidden microscopic worlds of cell structures and simple single-cell organisms. The Scout comes with three blank slides and six covers, along with a pair of tweezers and a dropper, so you can prepare your own specimens. The STEM version of this microscope includes seven prepared slides: One slide has a swatch of cotton and the other six have four specimens on each slide from a variety of subjects ranging from plant roots and stems to tiny creatures to hairs and fibers.