I like unity desktop but mangifier does not work out of the box.
Install ccsm and ccsm-plugin,
sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager compiz-plugins
In assessibility, enable magnifier and change hotkey to something else. The default Super-m is overrided by Unity-dash for music search.
Update:
Alternatively, we can zoom in and out with Super-Z and shift-Super-Z.