Laserworld Proline 750 RGB Review (at last!)

[majorlee]

So this is going to be my first proper review done on here! I have looked at some other reviews and being bit of a noob i wont be able to be as complicated as them, but i will give it my best shot and i know a few of you are waiting for this too.

The next difficult part is to seperate the threads or combine them into one?
Because i had problems with the seller and now have a new system to what i origianlly bought i'm stuck about how to go about this.

but i will start here with my general review of the unit i recieved, what happened in bewteen and the one i have now further on with summery.


Here we go...



So originally bought on Fleabay a Laserworld Proline 750 RGB laser with this promised spec for £1,657 + £60 P&P - i saw how expensive they could be and thought they were trying to sell on ebay to get rid of old stock and get some cash, this is why i thought it would be a good time to buy and enter the love of light world! maybe i was wrong...











So like it says above i was susposed to be provided with a 150mW Blue 473nm - 300mW Red 635nm & 150 Green 532nm


The delivery was super quick and was here in just 2 days - but no suprising since it was only about 100km away from where i lived!!! (i did look up before on google maps but it told me it was near old east Germany so i thought pick up was not an option lol)

Time to crack open a beer i think brb...


SO the door bell rang and i was faced with an impressively big flightcase and at first was chuffed to bits!

It came with thick & long safety chain, keylock, power cable, on/off key and documents in German

So i plugged in the beast and set the test picture which is a moving beam featuring four lines - red, green, yellow, cyan.......well not really.... the beams were not alligned properly and i was not getting the cyan, i was getting an extra blue and green line on the end!





Plugged in my DMX controller and started to play around with the various settings and was on the huge learning curve into 'laserism' thanks to the help and advice i have been reading on Photonlexicon.

So i took a few days before i started to unscrew things and make my way inside the laser unit.
Once i got the cover off i first noticed the mis-aligned lasers and was really suprised at a huge red beam hitting the ceiling too.





The green laser was hitting the dihcro so far at the top i had to remove some plating under it to level it out a bit more.






The alignment was really screwed up and to adjust the mounts was a real pain the adjusting screws were so recessed that the blue was impossible to move on the y axis so i had to adjust everything else to fit with this one.

with a bit of tweaking and quite a few hours of frustration i finally got something i was 80% happy with but by no means perfect in any sense

so when looking at the beams pattern on the wall i was not happy with the blue generally, it was really grainy and not up to much of a job - it mixed well with the red to give a nice pink tho.






So after asking questions on here and with Laserworld, i decided to go get the power levels checked out indepently.

Many thanx to Thomas (TL) for letting me come up to his place and test it with great equipment too

as a few of you know it came i well under spec (almost 200% under!)

total white light was hitting just over 200mW and individually the lasers were inbetween 60-80mW each (after dichros, scanners etc)

i was feeling a bit sick and just spent a few grand on something that i no longer wanted

but with some advice from my girl and friends they re-asured me that German Laws were on my side and i should fight to get the spec they promised me and hit them hard in the pocket too if needs be.

So i kept messaging Laserworld to find out what they could do and they offered to look at and test it and send it back at my cost, but they were positive that it was at least over 800mW and they would not find any problems with it





So to cut they story short here, i found out they were close to me so i would drive up myself and test it there with them on there equipment

As soon as i mentioned this, there attitude changed somewhat and they started to play ball a bit more lol - something was up deffo!

By this time too i got my ILDA box and software and was testing the laser, one night the blue did not come on at all and was in a fixed location so i couldnt do anything, was really gutted about it!

So when i started to test the beams myself i noticed i was not getting any analog modulation from the green laser, it was TTL, mofo's!! so another thing on my list to take to them!

by now u can imagine i'm getting quite pissed off but staying calm etc






So i went on my journey to Zimmern (Laserworld HQ Germany) and parked up outside to a beautiful Austin Martin Vanquish!!

Went into the building where i was expected (i think they all new who i was lol after the email barrages) and not so formally greeted or introduced by a small balding man who took me downstairs into the 'lab', mumbling in German which i did not understand, where i meet peter the very friendly and helpful technician (who did introduce himself) with fab english skills

I explained everything and all the problems and we tested the units individually and things were even worse than before lol - blue came up less than 30mW , green around 80mW and Red around 130mW

the short man which i think is Dirk (the boss?) was not happy with me at all he kept repeating himself saying that for that amount of money i cannot expect to have the spec that was promised me etc - i even recorded the convo on my mobile phone recorder for legal reasons too .

At the end of the day we signed a contract on ebay under German laws and they have to provide me with what was promised in this contract and as soon as i started mentioning this then things started to get moving.

BUT i really had to play Hard Ball here, i think Peter just wanted to help me out and get it sorted but the Boss man just just so pissed and angry that i came to get this sorted face to face.

So it seems with Laserworld u do get what u pay for - if u get it cheap on ebay then expect to have the insides fiddled with to make it cost effective for Laserworld boss man (who drives a AM Vanquish remember!) - i even noticed different glue with my green TTL laser than the other ones which clearly shows it was tampered with before it went out to me!

He even showed his lack of knowledge when he insisted that my Green was analog and i was basically full of BS, until it was tested and then no apologies for doubting me! He frequently pointed in a rage to certain modules and quoting the wrong powers and wrong colours (eg pointing to a red unit and saying this is a 150mW Blue etc)

so i said i'm not leaving until i get what was promised and they said come back in a few hours and they will have it up to spec for me, i think just so they would get rid of me lol - i can be really annoying and stand up for my rights very hard with lots of laughs, jokes and keeping my red haired temper under control


came back after a few hours and they told me they had replaced the whole unit apart from the sides since there were a few marks heheh

the new unit was tested for me and the red came out at 450mW, blue 120mW and Green 120mW - so its still not what was promised but i was pretty happy with it, and i can always go further with it legally but in the meantime i got a better unit to play around with until then lol

also the alignment of this one was spot on, really really good - so i went home a much happier man - after a few more jokes, i think they were very happy to see me leave too lol!







SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO...

Back to the review of my new upto spec (nearly) unit......

BEAMS, SPOTS AND COLOURS...

the white beam is very powerful, almost blinding to look at the single white spot on a wall.

RED - very good 635nm still goes over scanners and seems to have a funny modulation still which is hard to describe but its not really even increase from 0 - 100%

GREEN - analog now and very even - much better brightness too, still a tiny unit to my suprise!

BLUE - Still the weakest link in the system but much better than before (i want one of those swisslas 453nm tbh after seeing them in action!) great even analog modulation too.




The Unit itself is really well built lots of fans to keep it kool but an important dust guard to keep the airflow/dust/smoke away from the mirror, scanners and dichros - but its a noisy lil mofo and very heavy too @ 20kgs

after reading up on some loca german laws i still have to install some safety devices to make it 100% legal!

i will have some more pics soon as my camera batteries are out of power and takes a few hours to recharge!

All in all i'm really happy with what i have now, and am deciding wether to take it further and help out others who might buy from Laserworld through ebay, and i wish more people can do what i did, and teach them a lesson of overspec'ing items which are not being delivered (like my 400mW RG 4 head laser too)

i dont think i will be trading with them again as i dont like the customer service from the boss man and they will lose out on a few tens of thousands of euros from me in the next 5 years as i expand my collection and business

if there are any areas i missed and u want me to report on (as this is my first review) please let me know and i can update this or reply to the questions





but most of all thank you to u guys here for helping with this situation and advising me so well - if we meet in person i owe u all a few beers

as in the old games mags i used to read this is how i would short review the product




Unit Build - 8/10 : Pro's - Solid and Sturdy : Con's - Very Heavy & Noisy
Laser Modules - 5/10 : Pro's - Cheap : Con's : Inked out Values, Chinese stuff - (maybe overdriven?)
Dichros & Mounts - 6/10 : Pro's - Small : Con's - Hard to adjust
Scanners - 7/10 : Pro's - Handles most animations : Con's - Red goes over scanners, not very clean curves, circles etc
Extra's - 3/10 - No Sound/Mic activation, no SD card slot, No Safety Chips for legal use in Germany

OVERALL 6/10

[allthatwhichis]

Nice review man; great story. Too bad you didn't get it all on film. Only problem is I cannot see you pictures, and for once I am on the home PC. Actually after thepost I see a few, but not all. those are some weird dichros...

It is good to hear you made out better than you started off.

[majorlee]

thanx mate

i hope people are prepared now to think twice about using ebay and laserworld

are the attached pictures working now???

[sbk]

Great review man! And great to hear you managed to have what was advertised!

Well, I have to say (don't take it bad), it's quite reassuring to see that these lasers from eBay, which are incredibly cheap for a RGB of that power, are finally far to be as good as advertised.
I was in doubt once a time to have made a mistake with building a laser projector myself instead of buying one of eBay for half of the price, but now I'm sure I was right

Have fun with it!

[buffo]

Thanks for telling the complete story, Majorlee. Rest assured that you aren't the first person to have a hard time with LaserWorld. I'm glad your story has been told, however.

On the bright side, thanks to your persistence you at least got pretty much what was originally promised to you. So long as you don't have any more failures, you can start enjoying your projector.

But I think this thread should be a warning to others. I know I don't want to drive to the laser manufacturer's headquarters just to be sure I get what I pay for.

Adam

[allthatwhichis]

I bet those are refirbs they put on eBay. Returns that could not be repaired to the specifications of the original sale or something.

[White-Light]

Don't want to hijack the thread, but I had a different experience in the end.

I've put the power test on mine up here in glorious High Definition (hope you're OK with this Jem - there are no faces on there):

Shows a really good look into the Laserworld RS case for those interested.

http://vimeo.com/2103065

(May take a few seconds to buffer)

Test was from cold but showed 115mw Green and 489mw Red after a few secs on = 614mw total.

From warm earlier we had 120mw Green and 557mw red = 667mw total.

Maybe I just got lucky.

Having heard some people didn't get the promised flight case on their auctions, I emailed on winning my auction and said I now look forward to receiving the laser in its flightcase.

Maybe they thought I was a professional reviewer because of this specific request so I got a better laser. I did of course review but mine was positive in the end.

[norty303]

Glad to hear you got satisfaction in the end. I did actually consider flying my cheapy unit back out to them personally just for the satisfaction of being in their face for a bit, even if nothing else came of it!

Interesting to hear he also gave you the 'for the price you paid, you expect too much from the specs' line, I still have his emails with it all in. I dealt with a Martin Werner but i suspect he may be the 'boss' man you encountered.

What i wouldn't do to run a key down the side of that Aston.......

[Luminator]

Hello,

I bought the same Laserworld 750 RGB a few months ago on ebay and to read through this made me sick. I, no doubt, have had the same problem with laserworld.

I have yet to test my laser for actually legal proof of being under spec'd but its clear to me that it is. If anyone here lives in Alberta, Canada, who has, or knows of a place for it to get tested, I would like to meet you.

Laserworld has been pulling the same " I am sure the laser had it's guaranteed minimum power when we shipped it." joke on me. They have even suggested it was because the mirrors and lenses need cleaning, which is, trust me, not the case.

Does anyone have any advise for what I should do next? Going to Laserworld HQ is not much of an option for me.

[majorlee]

sorry to hear ur in the same boat i was

one quick fire way to tell if its been tampered

open up the box by unscrewing the eight allan keys screws on the top and 2 posidrives in the middle top

look for different colour glues on the laser modules - my green was replaced with a TTL very obviously but i didnt pick up on it until testing later.

show us some pictures of the inside and some of the beams & patterns...

good luck mate