Just wasted $850 on a laser level that promised the moon

I took a chance on one of those cheaper green laser levels from an online ad, you know the kind that claims to be 'job site tough' and accurate to 1/16th at 100 feet. After 3 days on a commercial drywall project in a downtown office build-out, the pendulum lock jammed and it started giving us lines that were almost half an inch off. By the time I realized it was the tool and not my crew's setup, we had already hung 30 sheets of drywall that needed to be ripped down and redone. The supplier's return policy? A joke. They wanted me to pay shipping and a restocking fee on top of it. So I'm out the cost of the laser, plus the labor and material waste. Has anyone else had a similar run-in with those cheap 'pro-grade' tools from no-name brands?

3 comments

3 Comments

pat7814d ago

Bought one myself last year and learned the hard way. Green lasers look great in the ad but the cheaper ones don't have the internal bracing to take the bumps from daily work. I've had good luck with the Spectra brand for the price, but even then you have to treat them like a precision instrument, not toss them in the truck bed. For drywall work especially, I always check the calibration on a known flat wall before trusting it for layout. That half inch error cost me a full weekend once and I'll never go cheap on leveling tools again.

price.ray4d agoMost Upvoted

Nah, I gotta side with @max_hernandez27 on this one. I've been running a cheap green laser for two years, toss it in the toolbox, drop it off ladders, and it still holds within an eighth over thirty feet. Not saying yours didn't crap out, but I think a lot of this "you gotta baby them" stuff is just how pros justify spending six hundred bucks on a tool that does the same thing.

max_hernandez274d ago

Half inch error over what distance though? I've seen guys freak out over a quarter inch over twenty feet and it usually works fine for framing. For drywall I get being careful but I've used a $40 Huepar for two years now and its held up fine. I treat it like any other tool, not like glassware. Maybe I just got lucky but I think people oversell how fragile these things are.