and on the topic of Laserglow group buys, that would be awesome if you did! I know they are a reseller of CNI, but honestly, I would rather work with native english speaking people, than the chinese workers of CNI....nothing racist, just its hard to communicate with them sometimes...plus, Laserglow is WAY closer than CNI!
I'd rather suffer a little language barrier than pay
out the nose for Laserglow's "products." Hell, they're even blacklisted by the FDA because they're not OEMs and lack the proper documentation for their products.
Laserglow has always been a rip-off and no GB pricing will ever change that. You will ALWAYS get a much better deal dealing with the OEM than a retail seller like Laserglow.
The thing about Laserglow is that they filter out all the bad lasers they get from CNI. CNI can be hit or miss, but Laserglow doesn't sell the ones that don't perform well.
Plus, they have models CNI doesn't have, Anser, Lyra, Herc ect.
You mean hit-or-miss in terms of how much
beyond the spec you're going to receive. From my experience and recollection, when buying direct from CNI, such as with Scopeguy's GBs, the lasers are nearly all
way above spec.
And give me a break with Laserglow. They're not "filtering" anything for their
customers. They just
binning their lasers to maximize profits. Oh sure, their lasers always output more than their sold rating. However,
it was never by much -- and certainly it never surpass their next power category.
Their baseline and power categories are just plain rip-offs.
Look at these ridiculous prices, and look at the ridiculous scaling: $20 more for 15mW of green at the lowest end? $100 more for 25mW of green at the highest?
I wouldn't be surprised if Laserglow and other cartel distributors were the ones who forced CNI to not sell to people like us through group buys. We were SEVERELY undercutting Laserglow and others' monstrous profit margins. Look at the
rip-off prices that Laserglow charges for their Aquarius laser: $400 for a 2mW max laser? $500 for 5 mW? I got my 5mW "Aquarius" via Scopeguy's GB for $315 -- and it does 15mW on average.
Look at the
real prices that CNI charges for their lasers. Compare that to what Laserglow charges at
rip-off prices on their site. For the price of a Laserglow, you can sometimes get DOUBLE the baseline power level from models direct from CNI. The margins are so wide that manufacturing variability doesn't even matter.
I will never buy from Laserglow again and I'm laughing that their rip-off site is now blacklisted by the FDA. The only laser I even own of theirs is a Leadlight-type pointer I got in some other GB because it was super cheap and looked nice. Other than that, their prices are so bad that they almost look as bad as the old Wicked Lasers.