I’m curious about this too.  Toys R Us is also selling the original Eye Clops for about $25 this season, and it’s a little tempting, but I’d love to hear some first-hand impressions before I make the plunge.

We got this for my son last Christmas.  It was cool, and does work (with limitations) but after he and his sisters magnified everything in the house they could find they got bored with it.  You can only see the dogs hair or the carpet fibers magnified so many times.  Eventually we disconnected it and put it in the closet where it remains today.  I would say worth the $25 but not full price and the new version looks like it might have features that offer longer lasting enjoyment.  Email me and you can have ours to test!!!

We have it, my oldest got it for her birthday…

My biggest complaint is that you have to hold the object very, very still… it is great if you are looking at one tiny thing at a time

the adults had far more fun with it than the kids

added to that… this was VERY helpful when showing the PTA team what a louse and a nit looked like…

We bought the Eyeclops last year for our then 6 and 9 year olds. We are homeschoolers and thought it’d make a good substitute for the microscope, since it’s sometimes hard for little kids to look at things through the eye piece.

We were very excited when we first plugged it in and magnified everything within reach—the carpet, skin, hair, clothing, toys. It’s easy to use, especially if you have the audio-video output jacks on the front of your TV—just plug it in, turn it on, and you’re ready to go.  You do have to hold it steady and butt the eye right up to the object you want to magnify to get a clear image. However, it’s nearly impossible to focus on anything that isn’t flat (like rocks).

The free “stand” that came with ours was totally flimsy—just a molded piece of plastic that we never used. I’ve also seen some Eyeclops games, which are just sheets of pictures and words in tiny print for you to find. I almost bought it once when it was on clearance at Target but decided against it. I think it’s more fun to look at real stuff than printed images.

I think the first time you use it, it’s a hoot but it wears off pretty quickly. After the first week, we put it away and have only used it twice since—once to look at crystals we grew and once to try to see bacteria in petri dishes (which didn’t work because of the space between the top of the dish and the agar—we weren’t going to open it!). It’s handy to pull out when you have something that you really want to examine, but for the rest of the year, it’s probably going to be in storage. I wouldn’t buy it for the original price but maybe would for $15-$20. And even then, it’s a big maybe.