Aries 100 or 125mW?

[zMd113]

VERY GOOD TO KNOW! Thank you for telling me about him. I'll give it a try.

 

[Justin]

To clarify, while CNI may be the manufacturer for the Aries lasers and the PGL-III-C, they are not the same laser. The Aries are built to our specifications which are different from CNI's standard PGL-III-C product. Each Aries is given a rigorous quality control test in our lab, which includes accurate grading of power over a very long test period. Also, if you buy the laser from Laserglow you get our excellent customer service and technical support, plus any service issues are dealt with in North America, very quickly and usually without any charge at all if it is within warranty. Buying directly from China means that any issues will be dealt with overseas, usually with a great deal of shipping costs and a very long turnaround time.

So, it's true that an Aries will cost a little more, but you will get the security of knowing that you're dealing with an established North American company who is responsive, supportive, and available to assist you down the road. A laser like this is an investment and investments should be protected. If price is your only measure then there's not much I can do, but we add a lot of value to your laser purchase that is not available with a group buy. If you would like to email me directly I'd be happy to discuss it with you!

 

[zMd113]

To clarify, while CNI may be the manufacturer for the Aries lasers and the PGL-III-C, they are not the same laser. The Aries are built to our specifications which are different from CNI's standard PGL-III-C product. Each Aries is given a rigorous quality control test in our lab, which includes accurate grading of power over a very long test period. Also, if you buy the laser from Laserglow you get our excellent customer service and technical support, plus any service issues are dealt with in North America, very quickly and usually without any charge at all if it is within warranty. Buying directly from China means that any issues will be dealt with overseas, usually with a great deal of shipping costs and a very long turnaround time.

So, it's true that an Aries will cost a little more, but you will get the security of knowing that you're dealing with an established North American company who is responsive, supportive, and available to assist you down the road. A laser like this is an oinvestment and investments should be protected. If price is your only measure then there's not much I can do, but we add a lot of value to your laser purchase that is not available with a group buy. If you would like to email me directly I'd be happy to discuss it with you!

I appreciate your response, I'm not buying anything until I get my money back from DL which should be very soon. I'm still heavily favoring laserglow for the reasons you mentioned above.

 

[Asa]

I can't vouch for Laserglow, since I've never bought anything from them, but what Justin said about the complications of dealing with overseas companies is very true. Here's a topic that depicts just that...

--> http://laserpointerforums.com/f40/pgl-iii-c-473-50mw-died-52419.html <--

Here's a quote from the topic...

oh wow....
This is why you gotta buy CNI lasers from a reseller like Dragon/Laserglow. That way the reseller will take care of most of the blatant QC issues and you don't need to worry about it. It does cost a bit more, but if you need to send a laser to and from china several times it adds up quick.

 

[aryntha]

Yup, that's actually my PGL-III-C-473.

Honestly if Laserglow offered a 473 in the Aries-like host, I probably would have gone with them.

I've got 5 LaserGlow lasers and they've been pretty good to deal with, in my experience. Right now, my Aries-125 has a tiny speck of aluminum (probably from manufacturing) that has fallen onto the back inside of its lens. Causes the beam to look very dirty and have a halo around the spot.

I wrote to Justin here to see what they would do... so I guess I'll get to see what the difference is, right here right now... For such a simple thing - which probably amounts to removing the front lens plate and brushing off that speck of aluminum, I hope it won't cost an arm and a leg.

If it is going to cost too much for such a simple thing to be done, then I'll probably do it myself (need to get an appropriate lens spanner) - but then the 'support down the road' claim isn't worth as much to me. But we'll see. Can't know till I try.

I'm waiting for the 473 to be shipped back from CNI right now and we'll see how that goes, too.

The proof in these things comes from actual experience... I will pay more for good service; but if it's all talk, well... talk is cheap. (Not saying LG is that way, just in general, if we look 'claims' made lately, by companies such as WL.)

 

[JonWienke]

I bought an Aries from Laserglow a few years ago. Overall, I was happy with it until I took it on a field exercise in Grafenwoehr, Germany (I was in the army at the time) and it got wet and the key switch quit working. I took it apart to replace the switch and jacked up the crystal alignment, and after messing around with it for about a week I removed the crystals and now it's an 808nm IR laser. When I get the time/money, I should replace the 532nm lens with something coated for 808nm to boost efficiency a bit. The Aries is a pretty ruggedly-built decent quality laser, it just isn't waterproof...