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ArcticMyst Security by Avery

EBay Laser Pens Review

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Aug 23, 2014
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Hello Guys!
Today I decided to do a (sort of) practice review on a set of 3 lasers I bought off eBay after reading the sticky "Review DO's & DON'Ts". I am still deciding whether I will keep doing the laser hobby or not, so I am starting out with cheap Chinese "junk".

First off, I made the order on August 30th from a U.S. distributor in California via PayPal. The order total came to be $8.35 for the set of 3 lasers (Red, Green and Violet.) My package arrived on September 7th in a small light brown paper package. On the package was labeled, "3pcs LED Flashlight pen" word for word.

Once they arrived and I held the lasers in my hand, I was surprised on how big the pens were. They are exactly 6 1/4 in long and a half inch wide.

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Each laser weighs 35g or 1.25oz without batteries and 60g or 2oz with AAA batteries. the laser body itself it is slightly heavier than the 2 AAA batteries going in them.

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They have a nice feel to it with a metal front, back and clip and some sort of smooth black body that doesn't feel like plastic. Only visible plastic part on it is the silver button. Also, the AAA batteries are slightly lose inside but they only rattle when you shake the laser intentionally.

Now for the laser dots!
First of all, the lasers are rated as 5mW pointers from eBay but I know from previous reviews that they tend to be overspec. First I tested the red laser and to my surprise, it was only slightly brighter than my 1-5mW cheapies. I thought to myself, "I'll use this as an everyday pointer." Next I fired up the violet laser and it was only slightly brighter than the red one. I also found that interesting. And last, I turned on my green pointer and it was a ton brighter than the other two (as expected). Decided to wait until night time to see how bright the beam was and not use it too much in the house (Due to no laser safety glasses yet).

I decided to measure the diameter of the laser dots from one foot away and here were my results:
Red = 4mm dot
Green = 2mm dot
Violet = 5mm dot

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Note: In the pictures, red may seem brighter than the violet, but in person, the violet is much brighter. My point-and-shoot camera couldn't pick up the violet too well.

Outside at night, the red laser beam couldn't be seen but the violet was slightly visible. And my green laser beam could be seen much more easily than violet but it still wasn't very impressive. Sadly, I couldn't get my camera to pick up the green beam even with the laser directly above the lens. My point-and-shoot camera only has an 8 second max exposure time as well. But for those of you who still want to see it, here's the best 8 second exposure I could get:

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You may have to turn your screen brightness up pretty high to see it cause the tiny lens on my camera couldn't take all of the beam in.

I think my red laser is around 5mW, my violet might be a-bit over 10mW cause of its visible beam at night, and last, the green is probably between 5-10mW. It's hard to tell without a power meter.

Overall, I like the lasers a lot and are much higher quality than I expected. The U.S. seller I bought them from probably made sure they were as close to 5mW as he could get them. Hope you liked my review and please let me know if there is anything I could improve on and add to future reviews!
 

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Very good report, wish I lived in your area to make power measurements for you with my meter. I started out buying the same types of laser pens too, then bumped up to a 100 mw green pen laser which was about the same size as yours, but it would heat up fast and loose power, damaged it after awhile running it too long, too long wasn't really that long either, a minute or so. Maybe longer than I think, due to repeating too much without waiting long enough for it to cool down.

After that I found a 175mw green on ebay made by Laserglow which had an unlimited duty cycle and seemed to have a visible beam that was 10 miles long when pointing into the night sky. I've tried to take night photo's of my green 175mw laser beam using my cell phone camera and it won't pick up the beam very well either, I am surprised to see any trail at all from your smaller laser using a small camera too. Thank you for sharing and doing so much work on the photo's and well worded post.
 
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Right on, glad to see you got the lasers. I'm sure they will give you a good feel for how you might enjoy collecting or even building them. That is interesting that the seller put flashlight on them because <5mW is legal in US. Maybe just trying to protect himself. Maybe they are all over 5mW, which is a good buy for that price!
So how do you like them?
 
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the violet and green are the most overspec ones usually way over those 5mw..
 
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Thanks guys, I love using these lasers. It just amazes me how cheap they are and yet has such a nice solid build. I bought them knowing they would probably only last a month or two but I am hoping the diode quality is as nice as the hosts. I will update my review if one of them does burn out though. If they last longer than a month, I got my money's worth :).
 

ARG

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Today I decided to do a (sort of) practice review on a set of 3 lasers I bought off eBay after reading the sticky "Review DO's & DON'Ts". I am still deciding whether I will keep doing the laser hobby or not, so I am starting out with cheap Chinese "junk".

You actually read a sticky? I didn't think anyone did that anymore :tinfoil:

+rep for an actual review.
 
Joined
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Messages
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Here's a cheap green laser from ebay you might be interested in: Green Laser Pointer Pen Beam 532nm 8000M Super Range Power Light Star Cap 1mW | eBay

I just received mine today and it measures just over 40 mw of output power. How much of that is IR I don't know. For 8.99 Delivered I don't know how they do it, even with low paid labor.

Late edit: I've run this thing for a long time and it just doesn't warm up much, the combination of low power and good heat sinking lets this unit run a long time without overheating. I ran it 5 minutes and it didn't change power output at all. I'm ordering more of them and after I get them, I will test how long this unit will run before either the power drops off, or it is destroyed.
 
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Here's a cheap green laser from ebay you might be interested in: Green Laser Pointer Pen Beam 532nm 8000M Super Range Power Light Star Cap 1mW | eBay

I just received mine today and it measures just over 40 mw of output power. How much of that is IR I don't know. For 8.99 Delivered I don't know how they do it, even with low paid labor.

Yes it's amazing how cheap they Chinese products can get. And I still need to order laser safety glasses before I decide to buy anything over 20mW. But yes, more powerful eBay lasers are on my to-do list.
 
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Sorry about the double post,
I was able to take some better beam shots with the green laser pointer right after a big rain storm and thus being very humid with some light sprinkles from time to time.

The low power green laser beam was much more visible than the last one I took.

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Joined
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Three of the laser pens in my sig, I bought on Amazon as a package and were advertised as 5mW but were actually much higher.

405nm - 64mW

532nm - 87mW

650nm - 94mW

So be careful, you may have more power than you realize.

I also bought a "5 mW" laser on Ebay for $20 from China. It's actually 155 mW.
 
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Joined
Aug 23, 2014
Messages
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Three of the laser pens in my sig, I bought on Amazon as a package and were advertised as 5mW but were actually much higher.

405nm - 64mW

532nm - 87mW

650nm - 94mW

So be careful, you may have more power than you realize.

I also bought a "5 mW" laser on Ebay for $20 from China. It's actually 155 mW.

Yes, I hear those Chinese generic pens tend to be over spec quite often. It looks like mine arrived really close to 5mW due to beam visibility in person and how the dots weren't much brighter than my 5mW red pens from dollar tree (excluding my green laser). I just got an under spec batch compared to other people's lasers from china.

Edit:
Btw, got 2 more beam shots. Never occurred to me that I could just take a picture pointing towards the laser device. Using a compact Fujifilm camera:

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And the beam is not quite as bright as in the pictures lol, camera is starting to see better than me.
 

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