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| The Viper 55mW green laser |
I like lasers. It all started when I was getting married. We needed presents for all the guys in our wedding party, but didn't want to go with something normal like a tie, or a flask. Queue lightbulb -- something severely dangerous and with no practical use
An awesome laser.
That batch of lasers came from wickedlasers.com. They were of okay quality. 3/4 lasers worked perfectly. The last one worked intermittently, and appeared to have a short in it based on my testing. They were also more expensive than comparative lasers purchased elsewhere, but I went with a "name brand" company I had heard of for my first purchase.
Still, I was hooked. After some research, many people recommended dragonlasers.com. A friend of mine was getting married, and I thought, "yes, lasers are the new wedding china", and used this as an excuse to give dragonlasers a try.
I was not disappointed. Shipping is from Beijing, which accounts for most of the delay in between pushing the buy button and having the laser in my hands. This box will need to go through customs if you are shipping to the US, which was a giant pain. The shipping method was trackable via USPS, but after customs tracking stopped. It claims to be in customs now, despite having been in my hands for several weeks.
I would say it took them about a workweek to get the laser shipped, followed by a two week wait on getting it to my door. Not too bad for the price they charged for shipping, considering the oceans it had to cross.
The build quality is excellent. It is heavy in my hand, and feels solid. This is in noticeable contrast to my WickedLaser's purchases. It isn't that WickedLasers is cheap feeling, it is just that DragonLasers is a much higher quality.
Unlike WickedLasers, however, DragonLasers hand held laser pen does not appear to have a safety feature. The laser from Wicked had the ability to take a "pin" out, effectively cutting power even with the two AA batteries in. No such feature exists on DragonLasers, so care must be taken as you are wielding a dangerous toy.
Here is a picture of me shining the green Viper at a wall in my home
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| Large green dot |
I took it outside, and kept the shutter on my camera open for 8 seconds, while I moved it around...most likely scaring the neighbors
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| Looks almost like a photoshop filter |
The beam is highly visible at night, and I am working on capturing that in picture form.
Overall, I highly recommend dragonlasers.com for their excellent quality hand held lasers. Just be prepared to wait, as not everything can be 2-day shipped from Amazon.com
I would like to do some power measurement tests in the future, as well as a total usage / set of batteries measurement. The laser itself runs on two AAA batteries, meaning to achieve 55mW we're looking at a current draw of ~0.017A or 17mA. Given the low side of alkaline AAA batteries are rated for 250mAh, that is going to theoretically give a use time of around 14 hours between changes.
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| The laser resting itself after a long day of blinding me |
