Cheap, mass produced magnifying glasses are not up to the task of giving you the clear and reliable image you need, which is why Poplock created a better magnifying glass for intricate work. Modern engineering has achieved extraordinary levels of miniaturization of components and products, saving materials and energy, but this precision often requires magnification to enable you to repair, maintain or build any of the sophisticated products on the market in 2025.
Why do we need high quality magnifying glasses?
High quality magnifying glasses are an essential addition to any toolkit for several reasons. Size reduction in engineering continues to be a core focus of innovative design, but this creates challenges for maintenance and repair, with micro circuitry, tiny components and almost invisible serial numbers. When you’re replacing an electronic component it’s essential to read the serial number correctly, and for reading resistor color codes, you need an image that’s clear and has no color distortion.
What’s better about the Poplock magnifying glass?
The Poplock magnifying glass has a better lens design than the mass produced copies you see elsewhere on the market today. Our magnifying lens has a different profile on each side, one side is convex and one concave to reduce distortion and color aberration. You get clearer magnification to the edge of the lens unlike the standard double-convex lenses you find in almost all magnifying glasses which always have distortion. With 3x magnification, the Poplock magnifier easily enables you to identify small components without strain.
- Concave-convex lens controls distortion
- 3x magnification
- Clearer image to the edge of the lens
- Lightweight, robust construction
- Drop protection rated to 3m
- Built-in LED illumination
Some double convex magnifying glasses increase the size of the lens to reduce obvious distortion problems, but this makes the magnifying glass heavier, and more bulky. The Poplock magnifier is compact and lightweight for fatigue-free use, even over extended periods of time. The lens is embedded in a robust, rubberised protective jacket to protect it from damage, and a built-in LED provides instant illumination of your working area.
How does a concave-convex lens design improve magnification quality?
Convex lenses suffer from ‘barrel’ distortion, where the edges of the image have lower magnification than the centre. This distortion is magnified in the double convex system used in most magnifying glasses. Concave lenses exhibit ‘pincushion’ distortion, which is the opposite effect. By combining a concave and convex lens, we have engineered an ultra low distortion magnifying glass, which gives you a useful image over a wider field of view, and clearer imaging for reading very fine print and serial numbers.
What are typical uses of the Poplock magnifying glass?
When text is too small to read easily, a lightweight, clear, magnifying glass is the best solution, and this is a typical use of the Poplock magnifying glass. Because our magnifying glass has a convex-concave low distortion lens element, you get more ‘readable’ clearly magnified space within the lens than with larger, heavier, standard magnifiers. This means you need to move the magnifier less to read text and can see a larger area of a detailed and intricate object or work in progress under the lens at any one time.
Electrical and electronic component identification & repair
Poor quality magnifying glasses let you down when you need to identify serial numbers or check on the quality of micro connections or track down a pathway on a circuit board. If you have ever struggled to identify a capacitor or find a hidden fastener in a domestic appliance, then a magnifying glass is essential. To get the clarity in the image above you need a distortion free lens, which is where Poplock’s lens design makes all the difference.
Watch repair and small scale engineering projects
Watch repair and miniature engineering are projects where a high quality magnifying glass is essential. A single hair can easily stop a watch mechanism, and is easy to miss on inspection if you don’t have a high quality, distortion-free magnifying glass. Checking the condition of fasteners and components in small scale engineering, like drone maintenance, can only be done reliably with good magnification.
Close-up craft work & jewellery making
A common use of magnifying glasses is for close-up work in arts and crafts and jewellery making, and the high quality image, built in LED and light weight of the Poplock magnifier makes it a perfect assistant for inspecting details and finishing touches in jewellery and craftwork.
Discover details in stamp, coin & bank note collecting
The collectible value of stamps, coins and bank notes is often hidden in details that require clear magnification to identify correctly. With the Poplock magnifying glass details and colors are clearer and more crisp, which is especially important for inspecting the moire patterns and security features of bank notes and fine details in postage stamps.
The Poplock magnifying glass, better than the rest
The Poplock magnifying glass delivers functional 3x magnification with a soft grip, robust design in a surprisingly light and compact format. With the built in bright LED, you get illumination on demand whenever you need it, and all in an affordable package. Designed and engineered to be better than the rest. Discover the Poplock magnifying glass in four different colors on the Poplock Amazon store.
