# Ebay 240mw green laser pointers



## bushy555 (Apr 13, 2007)

On Ebay (australia) at the moment, some dude is selling heaps and heaps of these 240mw green laser pointers starting at around au$70.00 odd.
I got a 50mw, and I thought that this baby was gonna be like 4 to 5 times the power/brightness. I thought I was gonna see a green beam in daylight. Wasnt I wrong.

Mine arrived today. It is crap. It is like me putting a 5.7 litre V8 Turbo sticker on to my 1992 Subaru Brumby (Brat). Might look good, but doesnt make it go any better.

It might be a true 50 or 60mw, but thats it. It wont ignite matches, it wont pop balloons, so it aint even anywhere near a wicked laser 90mw. I measured the current drain on the AAA batteries, and was around 930ma. I havent pulled it apart yet to measure the voltage over the batteries (once turned on) to get a true power consumption of this thing yet.



Never ever buy cheap crap from China!


----------



## LowBat (Apr 13, 2007)

Maybe if it was advertised as a 50 to 60mw laser for au$70 it would sell just as well.


----------



## stevetexas (Apr 13, 2007)

I've seen the listings you describe - he makes it sound very tempting but your results seal the deal. He's selling clearly underpowered lasers (compared to this advertisement). I would consider reporting him to e-bay as false or misleading advertisement. 

One warning - it may be putting out 240mW total, 40 mW of green and 200mW of IR...


----------



## bootleg2go (Apr 13, 2007)

bushy555 said:


> On Ebay (australia) at the moment, some dude is selling heaps and heaps of these 240mw green laser pointers starting at around au$70.00 odd.
> I got a 50mw, and I thought that this baby was gonna be like 4 to 5 times the power/brightness. I thought I was gonna see a green beam in daylight. Wasnt I wrong.
> 
> Mine arrived today. It is crap. It is like me putting a 5.7 litre V8 Turbo sticker on to my 1992 Subaru Brumby (Brat). Might look good, but doesnt make it go any better.
> ...



They are probably more like 10mW or so.
Yea, they get a bundle of these things on the cheap and then when people who don't know much about lasers, see the price and compare it to the price of a laser that is really outputting that amount of power and say to themselves, this is quite a bargain!, why pay the price that laser retailer sell for when I could get one really cheap.

The thing is that to them, this is the ideal product to sell to the general public as 99.9999% won't have anyway to verify the output. Then for those that do measure the power or complain, they state in their auction that they don't give refunds and will only replace the product with another one within 30 days. When the person decides to return it for a replacement, they find out that they have to send it back to China, HK, or somewhere else in the far east and include insurance and signature confirmation of delivery. This ends up costing them $30 or more plus the effort of doing so for something they may have only spent $100 or less on. 4-6 weeks later they get another that is exactly like the 1st one..... How many times do you think the buyer will do this before giving up? Probably just once, because by the 2nd time their 30 days return period is over. You can't complain to Ebay as the seller has done everything they said they would do.

They make tons of quick money because they don't have to support the product or even know anything about lasers, then when everyone catches on, they'll move on to the next hot item to sucker people in on Ebay.

Really, it's very much like a legal version of the Nigerian scam; they prey on those who think they can get an expensive laser for very cheap.

Just my 2 cents worth on these opportunists.


----------



## luvlasers (Apr 14, 2007)

Hey bootleg, well spoken.

As one of the hot scams on ebay, i wonder how long this will work for. You'd think there'd be at least another year or two of people being ripped off.

Bushy one suggestion is to contact ebay. You may find that his listings are not permitted and he could get his account shut down.


----------



## seanrolsen (Apr 17, 2007)

Hi.

I contacted someone who bought one from him on ebay. He informed me that the laser he received was LESS powerful than that of his 5mW lasers he has (and also sells on ebay).
Buyer beware...


----------



## Corona (Apr 17, 2007)

Hey anyone think that maybe 240mW is the DC INPUT power of the laser. Let's see, 3 volts, 240mW - that's only 80mA. Hmm. Nope, that can't be it.

IR output power, perhaps? Typical overall crystal efficiency, for a badly aligned crystal set, is around 20%. So that would give about 50mW green, with 240mW of IR. Hmmm, NOPE on that, either, from what I've read (well, maybe some of them make near this level of OUTPUT power).

So, what the heck _can_ this rating be referring to? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, that's what. Butt-smoke is all it is.

This seller should be forced to cease operations immediately, and be banned from EBay for life. What a pile of crapola


----------



## TITAN1833 (Apr 17, 2007)

+one


----------



## Cdawg (Apr 17, 2007)

so how many mW do you need to pop balloons an burn matches


----------



## TITAN1833 (Apr 17, 2007)

Well I can confirm my wicked laser 60mw did just that sold on CPF.


Cdawg said:


> so how many mW do you need to pop balloons an burn matches


----------



## luvlasers (Apr 18, 2007)

Corona said:


> Hey anyone think that maybe 240mW is the DC INPUT power of the laser. Let's see, 3 volts, 240mW - that's only 80mA. Hmm. Nope, that can't be it.
> 
> IR output power, perhaps? Typical overall crystal efficiency, for a badly aligned crystal set, is around 20%. So that would give about 50mW green, with 240mW of IR. Hmmm, NOPE on that, either, from what I've read (well, maybe some of them make near this level of OUTPUT power).
> 
> ...


 
If you see a seller that you really take offense to, report them to ebay. Ebay is paranoid about any thing that is ilegal or semi ilegal.


----------



## brighter (Apr 18, 2007)

Cdawg said:


> so how many mW do you need to pop balloons an burn matches


If You're using laser with no aid (external lens) it depends on mw/area of the beam at contact point. For example at distance 1 foot, 30mw DX will pop balloon easier than 35mw Wicked as for difference in beam diameter (<1mm DX against 1.6mm Wicked). On the other hand Wicked has much better divergence thus greater throw.


----------



## stevetexas (Apr 18, 2007)

Regarding reporting them to e-bay, I'm not sure that is the best answer. The lawyers and bureaucrats may over react and ban all pointers. (unlikely but possible) I would certainly leave negative feedback and consider taking it up with paypal to get a refund.

There are good sellers on e-bay. Abe from AtlasNova has a store on e-bay (I think) and his lasers are known to be high quality.


----------



## Corona (Apr 19, 2007)

That would be Arnold (A. Beland) and yes he is the cream of the crop. Many others use deceitful tactics in attempts to emulate him and leverage his fine reputation; lots of fake Leadlights have been peddled by these unscrupulous sellers and there's really no good reason for it other than short-sighted greed and overall disrespect for the customer.

You can find plenty of references to Arnold in the Cheers and Jeers threads

And you can bet he's reading this, too, which can't be said of the charlatans, they don't care what we have to say


----------

