Then I thought about the wavelength, typically, the longer the wavelength, the higher the divergence and combining long wavelength with multimode and you get the worst of the worst in regards to mRad for the size of the emitter.
The divergence and beam shape of this diode would be acceptable if you used corrective optics and expanded the beam out to one inch diameter or more, but one inch/25 mm minimum for what I like to see. I love fat beams but the wider they are the more power you need to see them well, and red being a long wavelength our eyes are not as sensitive to that color requiring even more power to make an awesome looking beam. PBS combine two of these diodes, use a 30mm collimating lens and then you might have a decent fat beam pointer project using these, even without corrective optics if doing that with a + shaped output.
I've taken the time to go through how this works for the newbies, although fairly simple it took me a long time to catch on to what is happening with something like this.
