Wicked Lasers

Why does WL have such a bad rep? Their products look pretty good, do they break?

Yep, they do. stories abound of under-spec units, (both power and mode type) complete failures, and all that jazz.
I've personally tested 6 WL's, and only one of them - a P125 - performed in-spec. The others were 2 35mW pens, a Core, 2 Elite 150's (Those were the ones sent to the winner of the Instructables contest - it had to be RMA'd, and the 2nd unit was still defective).

Don't buy from them, kthxbai.

Haha, i wasn't going to buy from them. Terribly overpriced!

Absurd pricing, high failure/underspec rate. I got lucky, the only thing I ever ordered from them, a Pulsar 100, is still going strong after two years, overspec at about 125mw.

Many better companies to deal with these days. Nova, Lucent, Laserglow, Optotronics, etc.

Lucent, though, is also infamous for sending out under-spec units. They send out many more up-to-spec units than WL, but you should still avoid them.