NEVER buy laser pointers on Amazon
The laser pointer in this post was being sold as "eye safe". Specifically a class 3R, which is <5 mW in the visible spectrum, safe for casual use because your blink reflex protects you but not safe to stare at.
It would actually:
Ignite flammables meters away
Permanently damage your eyes at over a 100 meters faster than you can blink
Flash blind drivers at half a kilometer
NEVER buy laser pointers off of Amazon.
Also, you can't trust how bright a laser pointer seems to be. The light in laser pointers is often generated in the near-infrared at 1064 nm or 1270 nm, then "frequency doubled" (two photons of long wavelength are combined to make one photon of half the wavelength) to get 532 nm (green light) or 635 nm (red light). If the conversion is inefficient and the manufacturer cheaps out on the infrared filter (horrifyingly common), it can generate many times more invisible infrared light than the visible light you're seeing. And that invisible light will damage your eyes just as readily as the visible light (worse actually, because it doesn't trigger the blink reflex). So again-
NEVER buy laser pointers off of Amazon.
Source: Me, the safety coordinator head of a laser research department.












