Desktop vs. Portable Magnifiers: Which is for You?
At Optelec, we offer a range of fantastic magnifiers for use both in the home and on the move. If you want to know which is the undisputed champion – a portable magnifier or a desktop magnifier – then you may have come to wrong place, because in our opinion both can be brilliant. It really just depends on your lifestyle, your interests, and what you plan on doing. But if you want to know a bit more about the pros and cons of each and which might be for you… well then, you’re certainly in the right place – so let’s magnify the magnifiers and take a closer look shall we?
Desktop Magnifiers
In the world of technology everything seemed to be getting smaller and smaller for a long time…. until it got bigger again! Think smartphones, everyone thought we’d be carrying around smaller and smaller devices as technology advanced. Then… BOOM, people started using their phones like portable TVs, and camera quality went through the roof so bigger screens were required to do them justice. If that teaches us anything it’s that bigger devices will always have their place where vision is involved – and it’s the same for magnifiers.
The larger the screen, the larger the magnification that’s possible. It’s as simple as that. As you can get more text in one view on a desktop magnifier you can magnify very closely and continue reading comfortably, while at the same level you would not be able to see the next words and letters in the sentence on a portable device.
Size can actually be a practical benefit too – if you’re using your magnifier for doing table-top hobbies at home there can only be one winner. Cameras on desktop magnifiers are usually raised, meaning that you can sit with your hands underneath them writing, knitting, doing arts and crafts, or whatever you’d like.
So… the idea that desktop magnifiers will somehow be made obsolete by their portable cousins is similar to the ideas we used to have about shrinking mobile phones – not quite right.
Explore desktop magnifiers here.
Some desktop magnifiers, while not considered “portable” devices, are still “transportable” – so you can still take them with you easily to different settings – explore transportable magnifiers here.
Portable Magnifiers
While the place of desktop magnifiers remains firm, the world of portable magnifiers has come on leaps and bounds – and if you need something to help you when you’re out and about or moving around the home, then a portable magnifier is for you.
Desktop magnifiers generally differ in more subtle ways to portable ones, which innovation has led to come in a few different forms. Tablet style magnifiers – like the Ruby range, and our Optelec tablets – aim to put all of the benefits of your desktop magnifier into a portable package, which is great if you’re quite a mobile person and you want to sit down to read text in different environments.
If you want to read text or view things while you’re out of the house in situations where you can’t hold a magnifier up for a long time (e.g. films at the cinema) or it’s impractical to set something up on a on a surface in front of you, then you might favour a wearable solution like the Jordy.
If you don’t have time to sit down and put on a wearable device, or you simply don’t have enough space to carry a larger portable magnifier and you want to go even smaller, more subtle and (most importantly) more portable, then you might look away from magnifiers altogether. Smart cameras like OrCam MyEye or OrCam READ are small enough fit in even the smallest of pockets and/or fix onto your glasses and wear all the time – as they are so small, they obviously don’t have a screen, but instead convey information by audio to the user.
