Inventory:  

The inventory at Amazon.com is admirably large, though a bit unfocused (pardon the pun) if you’re not exactly sure what you’re looking for. The categories are broken down into Industrial & Scientific, Toys & Games, Electronics, Office Products & Supplies (school telescopes, etc.), and several others.

Available microscope brands are C&A Scientific, Carson, Celestron, Galileo, Meade, Orion, Veho and Vivitar. C&A Scientific is a brand offering quality microscopes at low price points. This brand is ideal for medical and scientific use. Carson manufactures a range of pocket microscopes that can be used for convenient outdoor or indoor use with hobbies, industrial work, field trips, etc.

Celestron makes an impressive and trusted range of digital, biological and stereo microscopes and microscope accessories ideal for any use from student to hobbyist and professional. Amazon.com carries a lot of Celestron brand microscopes.

Galileo made revolutionary scientific discoveries that contributed to the invention of microscopes in the first place – the modern range of scopes named after him is rated both highly and poorly on Amazon.com. But as with any product reviews on Amazon.com it is important to read both the bad and the good reviews to see exactly what element of the product caused the rating. Once you know what you can live with, you can make a more informed decision.

Meade manufactures a selection of four different models. Amazon.com offers one of those – the 9600 – and another one that is bundled with a telescope. Unfortunately, these are rated poorly by users, though the price is a steal.

The Orion brand inventory on Amazon includes a digital model, a stereo model, and LED model. Orion also sells some prepared slides and a small mobile microscope here.

Veho sells an incredible USB-powered digital microscope that lets you zoom in from 20x to 200x. There are no user reviews, but it looks very tempting to the household microscope hobbyist.

The Vivitar microscope selection on Amazon is limited to low-priced models for educational toy and hobby uses. One user review claims the Vivitar 29 Piece Microscope set was useless after one hour of use and another user review claims that it works wonderfully and rated it five stars.