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Underspec Dragon Lasers Spartan 589nm "50mW" - buyer beware!

That's exactly what I was thinking, just how lucky most of us were!
Also, besides being battery sensitive as Jeff states, I've found both of mine (the D/L and CNI) to be very temperature sensitive.

Jeff, as a participant in both of your successful GB's, I think you've definitely paid your dues! :)

@starlight, if you want, I could LPM your 589 for you, just PM me if you want to do it.
 





Thanks for the kind words, guys!


IsaacT said:
Typically they have been good people to deal with. This situation is very unfortunate and irritates me as I spoke highly of them from my personal experience. To vouch for someone, be it a company or otherwise, and then have something like this happen angers me.

As for the question of them not getting any more in or not I remember asking Adam about the 593.5nm wavelength lasers and the 589nm pointers disappearing from their store in a matter of a week or less and was given the answer that they will no longer be stocking yellow lasers. My guess(now that it appears that they are not dropping the 50mW Spartan line) is that he meant those models they had dropped specifically. I believe a few other people came to the same/similar conclusion and then the story got bigger from there which is unfortunate.

One thing to note, is that if the separate rumors of CNI halting handheld production is true, DL will likely HAVE to remove their offerings due to lack of supplier. So we will have to wait and see. The bright side of all of this is that a lot of people now have a pivotal wavelength in their collection that may or may not be easy to obtain in the future due to diminishing supply from the manufacturer OR the retailer.

I am going to add an addendum to my review with a link to this thread so that people who read my review and consider them will have both sides of the story.

Thank you for sharing this with us Atomicrox. It sucks that the storm broke with you :(
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DPSS lasers always involve some luck - I knew that before I palced my order - what really defines a company is how they solve the problems afterwards. No one can predict that :P

Thanks for editing the review!

Jmillerdoc said:
Just curious what mode it is hopping to? I hear that the output increases at the higher modes and was wondering if that seems to be the case with yours.

These things can be finicky for sure. Both of mine are very battery sensitive. Be sure you are using a good high discharge rate Panny or similar. I basically quit using anything besides LarryDFW's HO 18650's.

I often wonder if there is a bit of a language barrier that is misinterpretation being equated to outright lying, or if some retailers in China use this to purposefully veil their true intent. I thought these people were the smartest people in the world. I wouldn't be shocked at all if one of them specifically worded a response in a vague way with messed up grammer just so they could say "no, no, that's not what I was saying". I am not suggesting Adam did this, I am just saying in general.

To be fair, the main reason I did not go through with the GB was personal reasons. You can read them on the thread. It wasn't Atonicrox's experience specifically that deterred me. It was his experience that got me to realize how lucky I was to get 11 Spartan 589's all doing within about 20 or so mW from each other when average power was compared. It may have ultimately because I would have made specific, indisputable criterea that had to be met prior to any money being sent. This would have included using my Discover card to pay. Had he agreed in an email (writing) to my criterea and I paid with my Discover, I would have felt perfectly safe because my Discover card account has bery strict buyer protection. I have used it in the past with Chinese retailers and ended up with a Free 500mW 532. Some of you may even recall that posting. My business Discover will immediately credit my account back the money and start an investigation. The investigation requires the retailer provide adaquate evidence that all terms of the sale were met and they must provide it in a set period of time. If they don't do either then the credit back to my account becomes permanent. Thats what happened on the last episode with the 500mw 532, they never adaquately responded to Discover and I never had the credit to my account reversed and charged to me. I told the retailer if they wanted their laser back to have a UPS or similar mailing label prepaid emailed to me that I could print out and label the box with, and to arrange a pick up at my residence. They said they would get back to me on this and never did. Laser is sitting in the box to this day and its probably been over a year. I think it is safe to say they decided to let me have it. I never use it because I have IsaacT's old custom 800mw one (900+ actually). Maybe it is time to auction it off and donate the funds to LPF? It is a noce laser but the end cap is semi stripped and it is extremely unstable, varying widely from 350-600 IIRC. But I diverge.....

Anyways, since I decided it really wasn't worth my time and I felt I had "paid my dues" to LPF with two successful GBs, I aborted before I could lay down my conditions with Adam. Best to be remebered for a successful GB rather than a potential nightmare of ticked off participants because their 50mW 589 wasn't doing 90mW like everyone got in the last batch.

I will wait a while before I do another. If DL conitinues to have participants post discouraging news then I am done. If somehow they convince me they are trustworthy for another GB I will think about it. Who knows.....
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I tried with two unprotected Panasonic 18650 batts, the quality 3400mAh ones. Did several tests with different charge/voltage and different ambient temperature. TBH neither of those variables seems to affect output very much. Temperature seems to affect stability/mode hopping a lot, though.

It mode-hops almost continuously to different modes, almost never stays at TEM00. Most of them aren't the traditional 01, 11, etc, but higher modes with a brighter dot (or two/thee brighter dots on the middle). This isn't noticeable as a splitted beam unless I use an external lens. It does seem to affect brightness, but it's hard to make measurements because I can't see the mode-hopping properly without a lens.

I'll see if I get some time and post a video this weekend.
 
Atomicrox said:
Thanks for the kind words, guys!




DPSS lasers always involve some luck - I knew that before I palced my order - what really defines a company is how they solve the problems afterwards. No one can predict that :P

Thanks for editing the review!



I tried with two unprotected Panasonic 18650 batts, the quality 3400mAh ones. Did several tests with different charge/voltage and different ambient temperature. TBH neither of those variables seems to affect output very much. Temperature seems to affect stability/mode hopping a lot, though.

It mode-hops almost continuously to different modes, almost never stays at TEM00. Most of them aren't the traditional 01, 11, etc, but higher modes with a brighter dot (or two/thee brighter dots on the middle). This isn't noticeable as a splitted beam unless I use an external lens. It does seem to affect brightness, but it's hard to make measurements because I can't see the mode-hopping properly without a lens.

I'll see if I get some time and post a video this weekend.
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I too am sad to hear this stuff. If it wasn't so far out of the woods I'd offer to look at it. But I wouldn't want you to lose your laser to US customs.
 
Atomicrox said:
Yeah, it's not worth the risk :/

Here's a very crappy video of it mode hopping - I didn't embed because it must be seen on high-res: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnIfwhTaeCQ

That day it was behaving reasonably well.
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I would just return it and get a refund rather than get angry every time I turned it on. It's clearly a poor example or a second.

Who knows, maybe Dragon bought an order of CNI seconds/not up to spec. or quality standards on the shelf stock.

Maybe buy another at a later date from a different batch.
 
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that's some mode hopping for sure, mine doesnt do that. I'd return it too and try again, despite the pain
 
There's no way I'll return and buy another. Even if they honor the refund (which I'm not sure they will - they've lied before!) I'll still lose a considerable amount of money due to unrefundable taxes (won't get into details).

Not to mention another 2-3month wait and the very high chance that I'll receive another faulty unit...

I'm done with this deal and with Dragon Lasers.
 
yellow lasers to me are a waste of money, unstable crap and overrated really.. yellow isnt that special color really.
 
mortuus said:
yellow lasers to me are a waste of money, and overrated really.. yellow isnt that special color really.
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It really depends on which color you find "special" really. Some people absolutely love yellow while others find that violet surpasses even the rarest of WL's. Now, it's well known yellow lasers are unstable(except labbies) but you would be surprised to hear that many members have pretty stable yellows on this forum(my 593.5 is amazingly very stable).

Honestly with yellows it's a luck's game, you could get a really bad one or an amazingly stable & over-spec unit!

-Alex
 
It's what goes into them that makes me appreciate it. The scientific process behind creating a beam of yellow deserves some appreciation.

Regardless, I don't see how mort's comment is really relevant.
 
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seeing how dragon lasers said how are all underspec i dont take much for the making, its still a wavelength with not that big demand yet but maybe in a few years they will be as common as 532 lasers or who knows..
 
Yellow lasers will alway's bring the oohhsss and aaahhhhsss to people you show them too :)

Anyway's...

The topic starter has had a feedback from DL, wich i'm all too familier with regarding a Hulk ultra 400 i once purchesed from them...
This once confirms my feeling, never will i purchase from them directly ever again.

My hulk ultra 400 (back in 2011 >?) was fine doing tem03 they said.

Had the same kind of response as in ... it's all fine for a $800 unit at the time...
I have a thread about it somewere here....
 
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Update - DL sent me an automated e-mail a few days ago with a link for me to write a review of the laser on their site. I wrote the review, gave it 1 star (no zero available).

It's been a couple days and the review hasn't showed up there. They're filtering the negative reviews. So now we know why they only have 3-star reviews on their page.

Not even DX does this. For crying out loud.
 
They wanted you to review a laser thats underspec and expected you to write something positive or ? lol..
 
Interesting. The more I read about them the more it looks like they deserve to be on the hit list. A la wicked lasers, almost...
 
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