We now have several Leica M80 scopes for daily worm work in the lab. Each M80 costs ~$5500. We plan to get two more scopes with lower price for undergraduates. Can anyone please recommend one brand and model to me? The price range that I expect is between $2000-4000. Thank you very much for your help.
if you’re tight on cash you could buy used from your local lab equipment store. Tritech also has reasonably priced low cost microscopes http://www.tritechresearch.com/SMT1.html
We’ve been very happy with used scopes from Vermont Optechs (http://www.scopeshop.com). They have all of the major brands (Leica, Nikon, Zeiss), and sometimes even the original Wild M5.
These questions tend to be cyclical 
I’ve just started a lab and came across a similar post from a few years back. Jennifer Garrison gave an enthusiastic recommendation of Zeiss Stemi 508s. I demo’d them and they were quite good. I also ended up demoing Zeiss Stemi 305s, which I ended up getting. Nice optics. The body is $863 and the standard K base is $998. So a solid stereo microscope for under $2K. I went with 16X eyepieces ($166) which increased the zoom from 40x (with 10x eyepieces) to 64x. I ended up getting six and I’m happy with them. The one consideration is that the footprint is small, so it’s great for 6cm plates but not as good for 6-well plates, 10 cms or 15 cms. Since we frequently use those larger plates, on three of the microscopes I went with the larger K base (would add ~$1800 to price). I also got one Leica S6E with a 16x eyepiece and really like it. But this was $4400, so a bit higher than your desired range.
Hi Thank you all for your recommendations! Congratulations to Jordan’s new lab!
Two undergraduates plan to gain some research experience in my lab and only work part time (10 hours per week). I thought to get them two simple but working microscopes. And we do have some money to use up before July. hehe…