Agreed. Stereo is the only useful way to go. Depth perception is an absolute must.
If I ever end up buying a scope, it’ll have a boom arm instead of the standard style Malcolm linked. I used a really high quality boom arm scope through college and it was much nicer than what I’ve used at work since.
IMHO, the mantis is overrated. I’ve played with one for a bit and you had to keep your head pretty still to get the depth right and it wasn’t an easy transition from a stereo scope.
We haven’t had any problems with ours. I’ve used both, and I didn’t really see much of a usability difference, but if you’ve got the extra $100 to spend I guess it could be nice to have the extra adjustment options, but we’ve both used ours just fine (and we’re two very different heights and sitting/soldering styles). We both use a vice to hold our PCBs stable under the scope and then just move the whole vice around to move the field of vision.
Just depends on if you want to spend the money. Camera port could be nice to take pictures/video if you’re teaching a class where it might be useful for the class to be able to see video of what you’re doing while you’re doing it, or if you work with clients to show a prototyping issue, etc. but most newer cameras can take excellent photos of even very small details in good lighting so for me getting pictures while I’m soldering something is a novelty.
There are a bunch of microscopes in Science, as well as an old one with video capabilities. PM me when Makerspace is open and let’s see if Electronics can use any of them.
