Including the Zoomax Butterfly, I have had three different portable electronic magnifiers over the last 10 years, and while the first two devices were useful, I have found the Butterfly to be easily, the most useful to me.
While the Butterfly's screen size is smaller than many of the others I've seen, for me it is drastically more useful. It is small enough to fit easily into most of my shirt pockets, which means that I can easily take it everywhere I go! To me, this is the definition of portability. It is also very light and actually weighs less than my cellphone! This feature lets it glide over papers and pages without moving or bunching the paper.
Even though the screen is small (3½"), there is no meaningful blur or delay during motion which makes it easy to scroll across a page without losing your place.
The different text contrast choices are very easy to scroll through until I find the one that works best. It is also very easy to scroll through the range of magnification to find the right text size.
A very significant feature, which my other "portables" do not have, is the ability to turn off the camera light! This means that I can use it on backlit surfaces such as a computer monitor, or cell phone, without glare back!
While the screen resolution does have room for improvement, I am sure that such improvement would lead to a heavier,costlier, and therefore less usable machine, and it is quite good as it is.
On the unit that I have, the camerais located near the top, which means that it does take some practice getting used to using it, but I expect this to be only a temporary inconvenience untilI get used to it.
Like every other vision aids that I've used over the last ten years, the Butterfly does have limitations, but overall,I have found that it does exceed my expectations and I recommend it to anyone currently struggling with other much heavier and more expensive units! The Butterfly is not perfect, nothing is, but the few shortcomings it does have are over shadowed by its portability, functionality, and ease of use.
D. G. Kurtak
Ohio, USA
