Hide yo kids, hide yo wife, batten down the hatches. I've got a fucking laser and I somewhat know how to use it! What do I even need a laser for, you ask? Fair question. I need it for lasering. The fact of the matter is that today's world is jam packed full of stuff that's badly in need of a good hard lasering, only to go tragically un-lasered even as we speak.

I bought this some years ago, before a ban went into effect that prevents ordering a laser powerful enough to burn anything in the US. Which is understandable, given how often some dumbass makes the news for shining a laser pointer at an aircraft, somehow thinking he'll be the one they don't catch.

This is what came in the case. Handheld lasers actually go up to 5 watts now but there's a steep price increase of like 3x from 3 watt to 5 watt. The effect they have isn't noticeably different enough to warrant the added cost, imo. They both burn shit in a hurry, but the 5 watt gets uncomfortably warm in your hand and runs out of battery quicker.

This one's activated by a button on the back. Oddly there's no safety lock. I had a 200mw laser before this with a safety key you had to insert and turn before the laser could be used. The rear portion has these jagged metal "teeth" I could probably use to bust open my car window in an emergency. Not sure why they are included except to look cool.

Here I am doing something you should never, ever do. Pointing a 3 watt laser at myself. At my tender, fragile vision orbs. That's what the business end looks like anyway. There's no way to focus the beam any tighter than this, either. They didn't include any means to do that, which is probably for the best.

What they did include were a bunch of different lenses you can screw on. None of them allow you to further focus the beam to a point, they all just create different planetarium laser show style patterns. You can twist the tip to make the patterns shift and rotate in a kaleidoscopic fashion, which is kind of cool. It gave my cat an existential crisis.

Here's the glasses they include. Not just any red glasses will do, either. These are designed specifically to filter out the wavelength of light emitted by this laser. Even just looking at the bright dot is slightly painful, to say nothing of the instantaneous and permanent blinding which would occur if it bounced off a mirror (or other reflective surface) into your eye. Lasers are not to be fucked with.

The batteries. I have a bunch of these because my taser knuckles use 'em. But that's an article for another day. They're RCR123A cells, basically a half-sized 18650. Why didn't they just use an 18650 instead of two of these? To get a higher voltage probably. It also comes with a charger but I have a couple of chargers which accommodate these things already.

Can't really capture on camera how eyeball searingly bright this dot is in person. Or the highly visible beam. You can actually see the beam very clearly in even somewhat dim lighting, it's only invisible either in very bright indoor lighting or outside during the day. Indoors with the lights dimmed a little, it looks like a phaser beam from Star Trek.

What it does to cardboard. It also rapidly melted a spot on the foam in the image above. That's the main advantage of the high power. The 200mw laser I had before took a second or two before it would start burning what you pointed it at, and was really only effective on materials that readily absorb light (black plastic, wood, cardboard, etc.)

This thing starts burning immediately. Like, the instant you turn it on. There's smoke right away, which also doesn't show up well on camera, and a horrible burning smell. This is without even being able to tightly focus the beam, mind you. It also burns basically any material of any color, which a legit laser ought to imo.

This was a huge step up, 15 times more powerful than the one I had before, but it just kinda sits on a shelf not getting used. I don't really need a laser this powerful for anything. I can use it to light a campfire when I'm camping, but I could also just use a match.

The beam looks really bright and awesome at night, but if a cop saw it, they'd be able to tell from the beam my exact position. I'd for sure get in some kind of trouble, as laser pointers below the legal power threshold don't have visible beams, even at night.

I guess I just like having it. It's the sort of thing I imagined everybody would have in the mythical high tech future, back when I was 10. People in the future would carry around pocket sized lasers, because of course they would. It's the future, and lasers are cool.

Well, it's the future and I've got my laser. Now to put it safely back in storage and never use it for anything! What a wise, practical and responsible purchase this turned out to be.

---

^{Stay Cozy!}