Koolertron 5.0 inch Handheld Portable Video Digital Magnifier Mobile Electronic Reading Aid with Multiple Color Modes, Rechargeable Battery Powered, Freeze etc

I bought this for a friend who is losing his vision. He takes this everywhere! I even had to make him a special pouch for it. He can now read menus easily and price tags and any other close reading tasks. It has been a very useful tool for him.

I bought this for a friend who has failing eyesight. He has had trouble for some time and couldn’t read hardly at all. With this digital magnifier, he says things are so much easier to read. He actually uses it to read books he couldn’t read before. This is a great device and a wonderful help for those with failing eyesight.

If you are looking for an electron microscope this is great. If you need it to read you probably should pass. It has to sit directly on top of what you are reading. At that range 4x is pretty significant magnification. Don’t know when you would ever use even 10x let alone 32x. The depth of field is very shallow so if you lift it even the slightest you lose focus. You’d be better off buying an old iPhone or other device and just using the camera set on zoom. You would get a clearer image and greater depth of field. Couldn’t imagine trying to read a full page of text with this. It was a decent effort on the manufacturers part so I won’t be returning it, but I think you’d be better off with a lamp and decent magnifying glass.

Excellent and affordable device to assist people with low, near vision problems. Easy to operation and allows for reverse contrast viewing at the user's discretion.

I really wanted this magnifier to work for my 100 year old mother who is having vision problems, but it has several significant design flaws, and I'm going to have to send it back. I will say, however, that it's really solid, has both AV and HDMI TV interfaces, and has lots of accessories and cables included -- even a carrying bag and a handle so you can hold it like a regular magnifying glass. Nice touches.First of all, the power switch on the side is too hard for someone with even a little arthritis to turn on. You have to either push pretty hard or use your fingernails to push hard on the tiny ridges on the top of the switch if your low vision even allows you to see them. (I suspect the young designers with their acute vision didn't think the switch would be a problem.)Secondly, the minimum 4X magnification is so great that you can get only 2-4 words on the screen at a time, even in a newspaper column, so you end up pulling the magnifier back and forth across the column and losing your place. I had hoped it would display at least a newspaper column width that I could then display on a large screen TV for readable magnification. It's about newspaper column width if you hold the unit several inches above the page like a regular magnifying glass, but then the image is blurry.When you are close to the surface you are trying to read, the light automatically comes on, and there is no way to turn it off. That light makes it impossible to hold the magnifier up to a computer screen so you can read the screen.The light does, however, go off if you point the magnifier at something like a clock across the room and magnify it if needed -- cool! I tried using that mode by holding the magnifier a couple feet from a computer screen and then magnifying the image as needed, but it's almost impossible not to jiggle it too much (something that's not a problem with a glass magnifier that doesn't care if you jiggle it a bit).The ad talks about reading the tiny print on prescriptions. But of course those are usually on tubular containers, and you have to rotate and hold the container in the air at just the right distance to keep it in focus while you read a word or two and then rotate some more. And if part of the label is shiny, that reflects and makes the image impossible to read.I wish the designers had spent more time watching elderly and low vision people try to use their magnifier and a lot less time adding things like a camera function which I doubt many elderly, low vision people will be excited about anyway, especially since use of all the camera functions requires pushing multiple buttons. I think this magnifier has great potential, but it's not ready for prime time yet.

Item has flaws in the operation. The selection buttons (contacts) operate intermittently and the unit itself does not provide all of the color schemes stated. Provides challenging operation for a sighted individual, near impossible for someone visually challenged.

This item is very much indispensable for me. It does the job and I only had to spend $190 for it. And if you're on a budget or you just don't want to be Gau just in your blind or low vision this is the thing to get. You won't be sent to the poor house when you have to buy one of these.

This is my fourth magnifier. The first two stopped working in less than two years. No. 3 still works ok and the Koolertron was intended to be a backup for that. But, at one third of the price, the Koolertron outperforms it. It has a sharper display, more features, feels solid without being heavy and is simple and convenient to use. So, no. 3 has been demoted to backup and the Koolertron is definitely my no. 1 and would have no reservations in recommending it to anyone. It is the best buy I know of.