200mW Green Focus Adjustable Laser from BudgetGadgets - Detailed Review

BudgetGadgets 200mW Focusable Green Laser

The Basics
This laser is one of BudgetGadgets' new additions to their laser line up. The new lasers come in green and violet, and in powers from 50mW to 200mW. The main feature of these new lasers is that they are focus adjustable, which mans they can focus to a tiny point for the best burning.

Shipping/Packaging
Shipping took about ten or so days from China, but they ship their stuff for free so I couldn't really expect any faster. This company does ship to the US unlike DX/KD, which makes this laser a great alternative to those sites. It came in a padded envelope:


The laser itself is packaged in a nice presentation box:


The case is padded with foam and covered in cloth. It has a cut out for the laser and a CR123 battery. It came with a primary CR123 for use right out of the box, but I recommend you get rechargeables. I am using 3.6V rechargeables which charge to 4.2V without problems, and I have used this thing a lot!

Overall Appearance/Feel
This laser looks and feels like one of those small LED flashlights which is a big plus IMO.


The focusing mechanism on this laser is the ring near the top of the laser:


To adjust the focus simply just turn the ring. The farthest you can turn the ring is set at infinity so you don't have to fiddle around with it to get it back to pointing after burning stuff.

The tailcap switch is a reverse clicky and has a very solid click to it.

Overall the laser has a good feel in the hand and does not feel like it is going to fall apart after some use with it. I've used this as my pocket laser for the past few weeks and it has held up greatly.

Visibility/Output
The visibility of a 200mW green laser is insane, so this is no different with this laser. At night the beam is completely solid and amazes anybody you show it to. As you would expect, goggles are needed for a laser this strong.

Here is a shot of the laser while running:


The beam diameter of this laser is tiny! Even when focused to infinity the beam is needle thin and can burn well. The beam is thinner than my CNI lasers!



The laser always runs in a clean TEM00. Even when batteries are nearly dead the dot stays nice and round.

Here is another beam shot of the laser in the woods on a dry night.


Burning
As you would expect for a 200mW green laser, this laser can light matches, pop balloons, ignite steel wool, burn hole through paper, ignite fuse, etc. This laser can do well with burning because it is focusable, so you can make the beam a tiny pin prick of light for max irradiance.

For more info on what this laser can burn, watch my video posted below.


Overall: Good Laser at good price. Definitely recommended.

Video:

Nice review.+1:beer: $80 for a 200mW focusable green laser is not bad.

Do you have a LPM to test the output.

If it is on or overspec I would probably pick one up.

Great review. Only one thing I'm wondering, what kind of battery life does it get?

Nice review as always. I would also like to know it's actual power.

Beam diameter? Divergence? Duty cycle?

Also, I don't think it was the brightest idea to put '200mW' on the outside of the packaging. They might not check every parcel going in, but one of these days someone might just pick up on that.

If you don't have LPM, Can you measure how long burn through CD case ? It's a poor standard, but better then none.

wow thats nice

for 80$ it is not a true 200mw laser... imho

No one said it is true 200mw. Sure it burns well. But with good focus, IMHO even 100mw could do this. Same host marked as 150mw can be bought on O-like for $99 (IIRC). So it's all about exact real output.

DrSid, someone reviewed the O-Like host. It didn't perform the same as this one.

It certainly didn't have the amazing beam specs.

If this does actually have better beam specs (including divergence) than a CNI pen, then it'd be worth buying these to harvest for modules.

Sure it looks good. But I would not compare the beamshots. It depends on too many things. Still it's clearly unusually thin beam, which is great. But we need real side by side comparison, or LPM results, or something we can compare. It lights matches pretty fast, surely faster then 110mw O-like reviewed recently .. but that too can be different matches, different focus, and hence it can't be directly compared.

O-like now has this one in 200mw added to there site yesterday.
New cute pocket Green laser 200mW /adjustable [OLCGL200] - $146.00 : Welcome to O-Like.com, Your source for laser products

Also its not $80 at budgetgadgets, its $118 shipped.

Looks good .. but if this one can do the same for almost half the money. I like this host very much.

should have ordered more batteries.

This 200mW from budgetgadgets is $118.08 , not $80. You have to add $80 to the base 50mW model to come up with the price.

dont you live in the USA? how are you able to get a 200mw green shipped to you since the box clearly says "200mw" on it.