Is Walter Products / Parco an ok brand?

[Khorax]

Hi,
As many others on here, I'm just getting my feet wet and looking for a compound microscope. Just wanting to look at different subjects, pond life, cells, etc and maybe take some pics later on and show my kids some stuff. My budget is about 1000$ CAD. I would like a trinocular head in case I end up wanting to progress into photography (nothing crazy) and "stream" the view for my kids. I don't mind paying a bit more and get some Plan objectives, and Kohler illumination would be nice. I'd like to be able to do DF as well.

I am in Canada so really have mostly Amazon and kijiji to work with. Not much on the used market except for a Leitz Laborlux K with 5 objective turret for 580$. Hard to find much info on that, and it doesn't seem to be doable to convert to darkfield... I cannot speak to the condition since I haven't seen it in person.

I also came upon a lot of Walter Products (which may or may not be the canadian brand of chinese manufacturers). Also "Parco", which has almost ZERO information online as far as reviews/stories, both in google searches and forums. However, I have found on the Parco website a seemingly really good looking (at least on paper) microscope that fits the bill as far as my wish list at a nice low price.
Here is the main page: https://parcoscientific.com/microscopy/ ... rsity.html
And this is the page for the model, which is the Walter 3000 Series: https://parcoscientific.com/microscopy/ ... copes.html

It's got built in Kohler illumination and you can further select of you want Bi or Tri head, and if you want 4x Plan achro, or 5x ininity plan achro. I'm leaning towards tri head with 4x Plan achro since I'm pretty sure I don't need infinity objectives?? That would be 778$ CAD... plus some shipping/duties/taxes so around 1000$.

Any opinions on the Walter 3000 from Parco?
Thank you for your time

[Scarodactyl]

Parco has a reputation as a low budget supplier, but they have sold some more expensive scopes too (they sold rebadged Motic m series as well as mitutoyo-lookalike m plan apo objectives for a bit). I would not necessarily trust them to source the best options from China.
If you're in Canada you do have the US used market at an accessible distance. I would consider having a look on eBay since the market here has so many nice used options.