Thinking of Buying the 500mW Laserglow 445 Polaris...Please advise

Hey Guys:

I am fairly new to lasers but I would like to start with a well rounded collection of a decent Greenie, a Nice 445m (this would be my burning beast), and a Red, and then later maybe worry about a 473, and/or a yellow laser.

So to that end I have already bought a nice 150mW 573 from Optotronics, (which I will be reviewing later on in the green lasers board) and was looking at the 500mw Polaris from Laserglow. I heard that the quality of their hosts are unmatched, and they are very durable, and this is what I'm looking for a solid beast of a blue burning laser. I also like that they are FDA compliant and of course the 100% duty cycle . However, I've also heard that laserglow are waaaaaaaay over priced. Right now the 500mW Polaris will cost me $450.00USD on sale until Dec 23.

My budget is about $300-500, would like to spend less if I can, but I want a quality unit, with a nice beam characteristics, high power, and the like. Please reply with any thoughts, criticisms, recommendations... I wanna use my cash in the best and most efficient way possible.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,

Sal

If you want a quality unit, with a nice beam characteristics, high power and also a burning beast, I highly recommend the DL 1W Spartan that costs only 239.99$.

Spartan's divergence is 2.5-3 mRad, and Laserglow's Polaris has 0.9 mRad. It's huge difference. Polaris offers unsurpassed quality of components and perfectly adjusted optics.

I have the "Polaris" for sale, bought at LASERGLOW´s supplier. The Polaris from LG doesn´t use correction optics, so 0.9mRad divergence is impossible. Anyway, here is the FS-thread

http://laserpointerforums.com/f39/fs-1-2w-cni-pgl-iii-c-449-3nm-290-a-57376.html

Once again: Laserglow often has different specifications than what you may find with "similar" products purchased elsewhere. The 0.9 mrad figure is accurate and our laser does use corrective optics. Please do not judge Laserglow's products based upon your experiences with other suppliers, as we often include special modifications so that the lasers are more suitable for our core customer base of scientists, engineers, etc. This is part of the reason that we can be more pricey than other suppliers, and the idea that all of these lasers are produced in exactly the same way is false.

Atm, I'm not really impressed with the Spartan, but I havent ruled it out of my decision yet. Does't really look that solid to me for some reason, even putting aside the less than perfect specs. The price is very nice though.

Anyways, thanks alot for your imput guys, ill let you know what happpened :yh:

-Sal

Refer to Justin's post above. LaserGlow is THE company to buy from if you want top of the line stuff.
The price reflects quality.

Justin said:

Once again: Laserglow often has different specifications than what you may find with "similar" products purchased elsewhere. The 0.9 mrad figure is accurate and our laser does use corrective optics. Please do not judge Laserglow's products based upon your experiences with other suppliers, as we often include special modifications so that the lasers are more suitable for our core customer base of scientists, engineers, etc. This is part of the reason that we can be more pricey than other suppliers, and the idea that all of these lasers are produced in exactly the same way is false.

Click to expand...

Guys, "I have seen the Polaris, and it is good." -- Justin is not blowing smoke. More info when my Polaris comes in from LG.

^^ Looking forward to your review

I too can vouch for Laserglow. Even I was a bit surprised to see their prices for the Polaris, but considering that they use corrective optics, and offer such great beam specs, I'd say it's definitely worth it.

I've got a 532nm 125mW Aries, and it's superb.

They're well worth it if you can afford them.

Customer service is as good as it gets too.

bbshamsa said:

^^ Looking forward to your review

I too can vouch for Laserglow. Even I was a bit surprised to see their prices for the Polaris, but considering that they use corrective optics, and offer such great beam specs, I'd say it's definitely worth it.

I've got a 532nm 125mW Aries, and it's superb.

They're well worth it if you can afford them.

Customer service is as good as it gets too.

Click to expand...

My Aries 150 is amazing. Has a dust speck behind the lens which causes a little bit of artifacting but Laserglow did agree to fix that, over a year out, if I sent it back to them. (The only reason I haven't so far is I just don't want to deal with DHL or FedEx more than I must )

My Aries 150 is the most stable non-Lab DPSS 532 I've ever seen. It does 180mW, all the time. As in, its graph is FLAT. Over 10 minutes, it will do 179-181mW. Amazing.

Justin says my Polaris is shipping tomorrow, so I'll let you guys know.

It's interesting to see the beam (what shape it has) and measure the divergence(if it's not circle then what axis diverges with 0.9 mRad?)
@Justin Could you please provide beamshots or some videos of high-power Polaris in action?

So.... intead of buying the polaris I decided to buy DJNY's 1.2W CNI 445, double the power, half the price, and its CNI so its bound to be a decent laser as well. I hope to get it in a week or so I'll let you guys know.

Regards,

Sal

Graviton,

Justin sent some beamshots to me before I bought my Polaris. He said I could post them here, but I'll be doing a review as well when I get it. (It just passed through Customs and should be here on Tuesday.)

Anyways, here are the beamshots he sent according to Justin's distances:

This shot is at 2 ft from the laser.



This, at 40 ft from the laser. As Justin mentions, the beam is still mostly round. No real signs of a 'cutoff' here, this looks like a corrected beam.



And finally at 120ft. The beam is elliptical, but not a line like we've seen from a lot of 445s. And honestly the divergence does look pretty tight; for 120ft - maybe 3 inches. not bad at all.



I'll of course post more when I get mine on Tuesday or so. But figured I'd post these sine Justin said it was okay, and because it's of interest to the forum.

Beautiful. Even at 120ft, a nice rounded oval. Is that the 1W bad boy? Pre-grats on your new polaris! :beer:

-Sal

If the dot is 1 inch at 40 feet and 3 inches at 120 feet, the divergence is 2.08 mrad (similar to the $180 DIY builds sold on LPF).

I thought the $1K Polaris was supposed to have a divergence of 0.9 mrad???? :wtf:

Those are measurements I took by looking at the ruler and eyeballing it in the picture. We can hardly go off of that. In fact, it looks to be a bit smaller than 3 inches, really; on the fast axis at least.

I'll measure it when I get mine.