Can I really get 200x magnification out of my 40 Euro Veho USB microsope?

So far I've been amazed at what you can do with this device, but I hadn't ever tried to get 200 magnification, because the results at 50 and and 100 were luvverrrly anyway.

Now just to get you to really understand what these numbers mean imagine your little finger, say it is 4cm long. 2X multiplication will make it 8cm long. 8X will make it 32cm long:

100X will make it 4 meters long and 200X will make it 8 meters long. So now look at your little finger and imagine it 8 meters long (26 feet in old money). I'm doing this because sometimes I forget that "times" is not "addition" and I think that 200 times bigger is not very much. I sort of confuse it in my head with 200, er, plusses. I dunno. Anyway 200 times is a lot.

When I saw a tiny tiny white dot floating in my cat's water I decided to go for 200X. How could I fish out the thing from the water bowl though? I looked in the rubbish bin and found "The Secret History" by Donna Tartt. I'd thrown it away without finishing it a few days before. There are many overrated and tedious books on the planet today, and "The Secret History" is one of them. But! But its cover was black, and would make a good contrast with the thingy, so I tore it off...

 

...then I tore off a corner from the cover, and fished out the tiny white spot. I've labelled it "Thingy" in the photo below:

At first I put the thiny on a raised platform...

...but the magnification was only about 60X:

Eventually, by having a 2mm distance between the bottom of the microscope and the specimen...

...I got more than 205X...

It's not a brilliant specimen I admit, but at least I've learned how to get the biggest magnification out of the device. And I tell you what it gets very very tricky and trembly with the old podgy fingers at 200X. Veho also sells a 400X device, but I think you'd really need a very very good stand to use that.