Deal Extreme 50mw green laser - power specs inside

[Chris-C]

I have recently received a Deal Extreme 50mw green laser (LINKY) and its really quite good.

I have had a few lasers over the last couple of years. One was a £30/$60 5mw one. I modded that to make it a bit brighter and that lasted me a good year. I then purchased a supposed 100mw greenie from ebay. That was £100/$200. This was a pile of poo. The beam wasnt focused and it really wasnt that bright.

After looking on dealextreme at some cheap LED lamps i noticed they did some cheap lasers. I umm'd and arrr'd over a few and decided to get the 50mw greenie as linked above.

When i received it i had a play and was quite suprised at its output for such a cheap laser. A friend of mine was also impressed and offered to take it into his work. They deal with BIG lasers there and have very very accurate measuring equipment.

From a claimed max output of 50mW he got it to peak at 28.6mW and after a 30 second warm up it stabilised at 16.4mW.

This test was done with a newly calibrated laser power meter and a new set of batteries - not sure on the mAh rating of the batteries but they probably were not rubbish.

Overall its quite bright but not really as powerful as it claims. I'm tempted to get a few more from them to see how they compare.

Just thought you guys might like to know

 

[Fallingwater]

The lower power is most likely due to its use of tiny AAA cells. Transplant the laser diode in a more suitable housing and repeat the test.

 

[Chris-C]

The lower power is most likely due to its use of tiny AAA cells. Transplant the laser diode in a more suitable housing and repeat the test.

I'll ask my friend if it is possible for him to try the test with the unit on a stable PSU

 

[AndrewAZ]

Over at the laser pointer forums someone said they think DX gets a bunch of them then some guy sorts them into baskets based on how bright the beam is on the wall. A few members have gotten some true 5mw greens that have been putting out way more than that.. But I caution everyone the DX have no IR filters so your not getting anywhere near the real output in the green spectrum. I bought the DX 50 also since it was only $30 and its alright but its nowhere near my 125mw viper (from dragon lasers).. But the DX 50 isnt bad if you want to get into the green but dont waste your money on anything more than $30 after that start saving up and get a nova laser.

 

[Chris-C]

Over at the laser pointer forums someone said they think DX gets a bunch of them then some guy sorts them into baskets based on how bright the beam is on the wall. A few members have gotten some true 5mw greens that have been putting out way more than that.. But I caution everyone the DX have no IR filters so your not getting anywhere near the real output in the green spectrum. I bought the DX 50 also since it was only $30 and its alright but its nowhere near my 125mw viper (from dragon lasers).. But the DX 50 isnt bad if you want to get into the green but dont waste your money on anything more than $30 after that start saving up and get a nova laser.

the readings were at 532m (iirc) with filters.

The guy doing it wouldnt do it half arsed. His meters read in 0.1mw from 0 to a fair few kw. I think my laser went off the "radar" when it went to be metered

 

[AndrewAZ]

Do you by chance have the readings of the laser before the filter was in place to get an idea of what percentage of the light was IR? So far I have seen numbers floating around between 15%-30% of the DX power is from IR.