Kaiser Diascop 50 N Slide Viewer (202015)

Bought this for my Mom so she could look at the hundreds of slides she has from many years ago. She said it worked perfectly, though she wished the viewscreen was a bit bigger. Explained to her that bigger meant heavier and not as easy to use. No biggie. She is very happy with it.

It doesn't do much, but it doesn't cost much and what it does do, it does well. Potential buyers should pay close attention to the size of this device--make sure this is what you want, because it's smaller in life than it looks. That said, if "mini" is what you want, this will do the trick--it is very easy to get slides cleanly in and out for sorting, and despite being small the lighted display is crisp and clear. Fantastic for general sorting, maybe not the best thing for making snap editorial decisions.

I wanted to save hundreds of slides I took in the 60s and 70s but I couldn't find my slide viewer. After researching all the ones available and weighing prices, I decided on this model. It did the job extremely well and with the lighted back, I can see each slide very clearly. It was a treat to review the slides and put them in chronological order.

The viewer seems well made and works well. It is just small. It will work for sorting old slides to have digitized, but not as a main viewer.

My dad used to have one of these viewers that we kids would use to look at slides. Last year I inherited almost 1,000 slides from my parents. His long ago viewer was no longer working - pieces missing. I wanted to go through these slides to reorganize them and holding each one up to a lamp was very tedious. I researched viewers and saw this one that was identical (except for color) to the one my dad had. The price was great too! It arrived quickly and I got to work. For quick looking to identify a scene or object in a slide this is the best way to do it.

I needed to review a large quantity of old slides and found this was perfect for sorting out the ones to scan into the computer. You can hold a slide in front of the light for a quick check (much like a small light box), or put it into the viewer for a good-sized picture. The viewer is easy to pass to other people for them to see the better slides. I found that you shouldn't let the number of slides build up in the stack or the next slide might not come through easily. Also, thin cardboard-mounted slides occasionally got a little stuck. However, this was not a big issue and we quickly got through what seemed like it would have been a very large job. We didn't buy a power cable but the batteries lasted very well so I don't think it is necessary to purchase a separate cable.

The mechanism for advancing the slide continuously jams with multiple slides. There is no way to adjust this to improve the delivery of slides into and out of the viewer. It works ok with one slide at a time but the whole idea in getting this model was about the slide feeder so I could quickly look through a stack of slides. Also one cannot remove the glass screen and lens for cleaning so quickly becomes very speckled with dust and debris from old slides. I would not purchase this again, and I would return it except for the unfortunate fact that I threw away the packaging.

I got this to go through thousands of slides from my father when he died. It was just what I needed to quickly view and sort old family photos. It held up great to all those slides and worked just great for such a low tech, low priced item.