Hello everyone,
Sometime ago a friend showed me a website (I think it was wickedlasers.com) that sold high power laser pointers. So I went and bought a 35mW laser pointer which was awesome! It was small, used 2 AAA's, and the green beam was very visible. Well, after a lot of use, that laser broke.
So recently a friend and I wanted to buy other lasers like that, so we went to Yourlasers.com and we bought this one:
SD-301 Focusable 200mW 532nm Green Laser Pen Pointer with Battery Set (1*18650) - Free Shipping
It's 200mW, so we thought it'd be almost 6 times more powerful than the one I had! Well, sadly, it was just like my old one as far as the visible beam.
So we started researching, and we found out 2 things: One is that they lie a lot about those lasers' power. And two is that power doesn't mean visible beam. A lot of invisible infrared light is also emitted by the laser, and that is also counted in the advertised power. I'm not sure which was our case. But if you look on the photos inside the link above (first photo), the sticker has 3 pretty nasty spelling errors: "APER TURE", "DRIECT" and "PEODUCT". We just went "oh wow..." on those. I mean, it's printed on a final product, geez... But that asside, the beam was not bright at all, and the burning power wasn't that great either. Takes a few seconds to light a match, and burning black surfaces takes quite some pacience. My old 35mW laser could do these just as fast.
Anyways, we thought we'd come ask the experts for help, because it's very clear to us that this takes knowledge and experience. We really don't care for burning power. We're really looking for a bright beam. But we're not sure what we should look for among the specs, since my old 35mW laser was just as bright as this new 200mW.
Also, we kept finding 200mW green lasers at very different prices, even on the same websites. So we should've noticed that mW wasn't really the whole deal. But most sites we looked (specially Yourlasers.com) pretty much only advertised that one parameter (mW) as far as the laser's intensity.
Anyone have any recommendation or advice?
Thanks in advance!
Sometime ago a friend showed me a website (I think it was wickedlasers.com) that sold high power laser pointers. So I went and bought a 35mW laser pointer which was awesome! It was small, used 2 AAA's, and the green beam was very visible. Well, after a lot of use, that laser broke.
So recently a friend and I wanted to buy other lasers like that, so we went to Yourlasers.com and we bought this one:
SD-301 Focusable 200mW 532nm Green Laser Pen Pointer with Battery Set (1*18650) - Free Shipping
It's 200mW, so we thought it'd be almost 6 times more powerful than the one I had! Well, sadly, it was just like my old one as far as the visible beam.
So we started researching, and we found out 2 things: One is that they lie a lot about those lasers' power. And two is that power doesn't mean visible beam. A lot of invisible infrared light is also emitted by the laser, and that is also counted in the advertised power. I'm not sure which was our case. But if you look on the photos inside the link above (first photo), the sticker has 3 pretty nasty spelling errors: "APER TURE", "DRIECT" and "PEODUCT". We just went "oh wow..." on those. I mean, it's printed on a final product, geez... But that asside, the beam was not bright at all, and the burning power wasn't that great either. Takes a few seconds to light a match, and burning black surfaces takes quite some pacience. My old 35mW laser could do these just as fast.
Anyways, we thought we'd come ask the experts for help, because it's very clear to us that this takes knowledge and experience. We really don't care for burning power. We're really looking for a bright beam. But we're not sure what we should look for among the specs, since my old 35mW laser was just as bright as this new 200mW.
Also, we kept finding 200mW green lasers at very different prices, even on the same websites. So we should've noticed that mW wasn't really the whole deal. But most sites we looked (specially Yourlasers.com) pretty much only advertised that one parameter (mW) as far as the laser's intensity.
Anyone have any recommendation or advice?
Thanks in advance!