Popular Uses

Is it getting close to being tax season? If so, you may have what seems like a never-ending supply of documents that you have to go through before you send off your return. Now, fine print can be pretty small, but more often than not, all you would really need is a magnifier glass of this intensity to read even the most difficult of letters, and easily prevent eye strain.

Are you a stamp collector? You may not need anything higher than a 5x magnifying glass. You can use one of these tools to examine the edges and the fine details of your stamps, and keep up with your collection’s nitty gritty details. The same can apply to you if you are a sports card collector, or any other sort of hobbyist that enjoys collecting novelty items.

This type of handheld magnifying glass is also perfect for reading a newspaper. The grainy photos on newspapers aren’t quite worthy of magnification, but sometimes you may come across some smudged text, or thinly printed text, that needs the handy use of a magnifier. 5x should be more than plenty for these types of magnification jobs. Truthfully, 10x would be a little much, and anything over that would be overkill.

We also found this type of lighted magnifying glass to be quite useful if you are having a hard time reading the labels on medicine bottles or containers. After all, you want to make sure you are taking the proper meds when you’re at your drowsiest state in the mornings.

Conclusion

We suggest you find a metal magnifying glass with a 3” lens. This is often considered the classic measurement for a magnifier glass, and is also perfect for fitting easily into a drawer in your desk. In summary, 5x magnifying glass with light is just what you need if you’re a collecting hobbyist, a newspaper reader, or someone who simply needs a tool to verify the fine print on important documents.

Anyway, I mentioned in a previous article about how much of a giddy little kid I am when it comes to collecting stamps. Well, just today I found myself staring into my desktop magnifying glass with light for about 30 minutes straight. I was enjoying my time pursuing my favorite hobby of all so much that I didn’t even notice the magnitude of what was happening.

Until about a week ago, I exclusively used my handheld magnifying glasses, especially the lighted ones. My old college roommate, remembering my passion for collecting stamps, bought me a desktop magnifying glass with light for my birthday two years ago. At the time I thought this was great – I just knew I wouldn’t get enough of this thing.

And then it sat in its box for a year. I don’t know why I never got around to opening it, but that’s what happened. The poor neglected desk magnifying glass remained untouched for a full year.

One way or another, it found itself onto my desk (I’m guessing a certain significant other pulled it out), and there it sat for a while longer.

Long story short, the suddenly very handy tool became a staple in my hobby, and it took me until today to realize it. I am trying to think back, and come up with a list of benefits of having a lighted magnifying glass that sits on your desk that I can share with you.

Benefits

1. It’s hands free. I know I mentioned this already, but I especially like this part. I can peer through the top of the glass and have both of my hands free to position the object I am magnifying to my liking.

2. The glass is already positioned properly. When I say this, I am referring to the minor annoyance that handheld magnifying glasses have, which is the necessity of having to move the focal point of the glass up, down, left and right just to get the proper image you want. With the desktop magnifying glass with light, I just turn the knob on the arm to the left or to the right, and no matter what the glass is positioned right where I need it to be.

3. Accessibility. Yes, a handheld tool is rates higher on the portability scale. But portability does not necessarily translate into accessibility. I like knowing the desktop magnifier is sitting in the same place all the time, and that it’d be really hard to lose (even if I tried). Admittedly, I lose things pretty often.

If any of these 3 reasons resonate with you, and you have a hobby that you like to pursue at the comfort of your desk, then a desktop magnifying glass with light might be for you. If only it didn’t take me so long to find out!

Yes, there are other tools for the job, but there’s just something about a 10x magnifier that makes it perfect for reading a map.

Of course, a magnifying glass with light 10x can do other things, as well. I like to use my lighted magnifier as a tool for feeding my stamp hobby. I have a pretty impressive stamp collection, if I do say so myself, and 10x magnification is just what I need to see all of the details that I like to see in the stamps I come across.

Of course, the obvious draw back is that nowadays, it’s very easy, let alone affordable, to acquire a magnifier with higher magnification than a magnifying glass with light 10x. A lot of my friends who also enjoy collecting stamps swear by using their 30x magnifier. A higher magnification multiplier translates into the ability to enlarge the image of a particular object even more, of course.

To me, I can see 30x being necessary in certain situations. But, I think it can be overkill for most jobs, especially for the casual stamp collector. The 10x magnifying glass with light even comes in handy for my other hobby — reading the newspaper.

Okay, so it’s not so much a hobby as it is a public service. In case you haven’t heard, the newspaper industry is getting hit pretty hard nowadays. I hold the newspaper to be very important in our society, and I would really hate for it to die off completely. Don’t get me wrong — I love the internet. But, I still have to believe there’s room in this world for both media types.

Back to my point — I find a 30x magnifying glass a little ridiculous when it comes to reading “normal sized” print like you would find in an ordinary newspaper article. As you may have heard by now, bigger isn’t always better.

I like to keep a magnifying glass with light 10x pretty handy, as it is one of the more versatile tools in its class. Whatever your hobby is, — be it stamps, or map reading like me — or even things like jewelry collecting, I think you’ll find this magnification more than enough for your needs.

Amazingly, what is thought to be the first magnifying lens in history is the Nimrud lens, a 3 thousand year old artifact. Archeologists and historians attribute this artifact to ancient Assyria, and many highly acclaimed professionals have said that it could very well had been used by the Assyrians to magnify objects. Some believe, though it being somewhat of a more far-fetched idea, that the artifact’s purpose was to start fires, resembling what is called a burning-glass. The lens would ideally concentrate rays of sunlight, and set fire to whatever flammable material the concentrated beam was pointing to.

Many ancient writings can help us get a better idea of when magnifying glasses with light came about. One of the earliest indications of glass used as a magnification device is in 8^th century BC, a period in which ancient hieroglyphs mentioned using simple glass lenses.

Some of the oldest evidence we can find of a magnifying glass being used to produce a magnified image of something was produced in year 1021. This is the year Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) wrote and published the Book of Optics. In the 13^th century, the book had been translated into the Latin language, and a man by the name of Roger Bacon got his hands on the transcription. Bacon, an English man, would go on to publish the description of a contemporary magnifying glass. It wouldn’t be long until the first pair of eyeglasses, or spectacles, were invented in Italy in the 13^th century.

In the proceeding years, the world would see a countless number of inventions in the optics industry. After the spectacles came the light microscope, it’s origins long attributed to Zaccharias and Hans Jannsen in 1590, and Galileo in 1609.

Two German men by the names of Max Knoll and Ernst Ruska invented the electron microscope in the 1930’s. This invention effectively made the light microscope obsolete, leading to where we stand today.

What we now know today as magnifying glasses, and even magnifying glasses with light, are also quite primitive when compared to the technicality of the electron microscope, and even the light microscope. However, it that does not detract from its practical uses in your every day lives.

Magnifying glasses with light are simply magnifying glasses with lights attached/installed onto them. The magnifying glasses you see today are typically made with double-convex lenses that are convex on both sides. Add a handle and a few LED lights, and you have yourself a basic magnifying glass with light.

Specifications

The SE illuminated magnifier requires 4 AA batteries to operate. Yes, we aren’t big fans of going through package after package of batteries either. But, honestly, their 2X model is very efficient when it comes to energy usage. We only had to change the batteries out once every couple months.

The 2x magnifying glass comes in a standard square 3.25” x 3.25” size, and we found it to be the most reliable part of the whole product. That’s not to say we thought the rest of the lighted magnifying glass was made out of dinky materials, but we can definitely tell SE did not skimp out on the glass, and the parts holding the glass in place.

Additional Commentary

One of the not-so-good things we noticed about the SE illuminated magnifying glass was that it had perhaps maybe too defined of a viewing range when it came to illuminating the entire object that you are looking at. Like a handful of other glasses we’ve tried, we had to be very meticulous with where we held this glass in order to sufficiently illuminate whatever we were viewing. Granted, this was only a minor hassle, and we got used to it rather quickly. However, it is worth keeping in mind if you are looking for a magnifying lens that has more range when it comes to illumination, you might want to look elsewhere.

We did find the handle to be a little on the cheap side. We have always appreciated SE’s style, but sometimes the plastics they use just feel a little clunky. This was more of a subjective observation, however. If you don’t care about what it feels like in your hand and you just want a fantastic clear lens, ignore this comment.

The battery cover on the SE illuminated magnifier can be hit and miss. We’ve tested this on several identical devices, and found some battery covers to be very easy to remove (sometimes even being too easy), but every now and then we would come across a battery cover that wouldn’t come off even if you took a crowbar to it. That’s an exaggeration, obviously. But we can’t quite put a finger on why the battery cover’s “stickiness” varies from device to device.

Verdict

We liked the squared shape of the glass, as it just made more sense to us for things to magnified in a square rather than a circle. We couldn’t ask for a better glass, and we were really surprised by how energy efficient this illuminated magnifying glass was. We wouldn’t let the somewhat questionable in quality plastic handle, and the strange battery cover problem keep us from buying another one of these products.

Shopping for a magnifying glass with light is not a very simple task these days. A high quality one is about as hard to come by as a caveman in New York City. The conventional method of searching for a hands free magnifying glass with a light fixture is to just type what you are looking for into a search engine, and seeing what you come up with. That or physically going to a store.

However, a simple search, whether it be online or at your local store, will reveal how little information there actually is about any table top magnifying glass with light product in existence. Little information is given on customer experiences with certain brands. Oddly enough, sometimes there isn’t even a brand name present on certain products in online mega stores.

So, what can you do to figure out which handy dandy illuminated magnifier is for you? Why, come to our website, of course. If you have found us, you have completed step one, and you deserve a pat on the back.

Now then, let’s set a few things straight about what you should expect out of a magnifying glass with light, shall we? Even when you do come across magnifiers product specifications, reviews, or anything of the sort, you are always left with a feeling that something was lacking from whatever you just read. Here, we hope to fill in all the details for you by being as helpful as possible.

The light that comes with a illumination magnifying glass is typically of the LED sort with efficient energy use, and unobtrusive placement. The products we favor less than others typically have an odd or inconvenient placement of the light, so to make sure you are getting a well-designed magnifier, just make sure you are reading the product description. And always, always make sure that you see a picture of what you are buying before you ever submit any payment details.

As an example of what you might see when you’re shopping, some of the more obscure brands that offer products such as a folding magnifying glass, and desk magnifier lamps that have extendable arms, will often times simply stick an LED somewhere on the product and ship it out without putting much thought into it (i.e. on the arm of the desk magnifier, or the handle of the foldable glass). Be wary of these types of business practices, and always make sure you trust the company you are dealing with.

Clamps on magnifying glasses that have lights are used for clamping your fixture to a desk, a work bench, or any other object, for convenient examining and illuminating. Some clamps will be wider than others, some narrower. Make sure the dimensions of the clamp on whatever product you are looking in to are sufficient for your needs.

Generally speaking, a magnifying glass with light will come with an ON/OFF switch. There will be times when whatever images or items you are working on need not be illuminated, so the convenience and practicality of being able to turn the light off seems like an obvious feature to have. However, some brands do not build this feature in, surprisingly. If an ON/OFF switch is not explicitly stated in the product specifications, and this flexibility is important to you, we suggest you steer clear. There are plenty of other options.

Large adjustable magnifying glasses will often times have a cord that you would plug in to your regular every day power outlet. However, a great number of the more average or medium sized lighted lenses will be battery powered, with AA being the most commonly used battery size.

All magnifying glass with light products come in different sizes that are meant to suit your quality of vision, and their lenses are generally round in shape. Check each product description for details on each item’s specific ratings and measurements. Also, magnification power varies from glass to glass. You can find 10x resolutions, 30x resolutions, and many, many more. It’s up to you to decide your own preferences. But, rest assured, we’re here to help you as you go along!