Strait-Line 6041300CD Intersect 1/8-Inch at 15-Feet Self Leveling Crossed Line Laser
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Tools and Hardware Reviews of Strait-Line 6041300CD Intersect 1/8-Inch at 15-Feet Self Leveling Crossed Line Laser
Customer Review: Happy
Summary: 4 Stars
I bought this product for my brother-in-law for Christmas. He seems really happy with it. I won sister-in-law of the year because it is exactly what he wanted, and almost bought it for himself until one of his family members told him to wait until after Christmas.Customer Review: I could not have imagined it would work so well
Summary: 5 Stars
After reading the mixed reviews, I decided that it was worth taking a chance, given the low price and amazon's return policy. What I found was a tool that projected lines clearly and accurately, and it self leveled far better than I ever thought it would.
I've used traditional bubble levels, and levels with built in lasers that rely on the user positioning them using a bubble. With any of those, there is still a degree of error since it's a matter of judgment whether the bubble is exactly between the lines or in the middle of the circle.
This level merely requires being held against a wall, or mounted with adhesive. It doesn't matter if you hold it a few degrees off center because the lines will eventually come to rest exactly where they should.
It is designed to be against a wall with the switch facing toward you and the writing facing the correct way to read. Since the bottom part is curved, it is not designed to be used while placed on a surface. It's not surprising that one reviewer found things off by a few inches when used that way. It would fall over if properly oriented and point randomly if set down with the switch on the top.
The manufacturer says you will get 10 hours of use with four 1.5v alkaline batteries. Since four 1.2v NiMH rechargeable batteries would produce 4.8v instead of 6v, the reviewer who tried them got the results that should be expected.
A limitation is that you can't use this to check to see if your floor is level, nor could you project a line within the bottom inches of your wall. But the manufacturer tells you that up front. And you also can't sit it on a desk or a table that you want to level. But you wouldn't want a laser for that anyway.
UPDATE:
After using it regularly for about a year, it is still going strong. Despite its single switch simplicity, it has become clearer to me how easy it is for people to misuse. The "design flaw" is the lack of "this end up" labels and "level" and "square" switch labels instead of just lock and unlock ones. My teenage daughter completely misunderstood it. After I spent a few seconds showing her, she kicked me out of the room and successfully completed her first "do it yourself" project: mounting a full length mirror on a wall.
If you throw the switch the "wrong" way (for leveling), you will lock it (by design) and it will work to square things. If you want to project one beam against a line so you can get another one at 90 degrees to it, it can help with flooring but if you think you are using it as a level that way, you are going to get bad results.
When unlocked, the unit is essentially like a three way laser pointer hanging from a pendulum. If you let it rest, it will self center. If you turn it sideways, it will come to rest randomly. Think of it as an unwound grandfather clock with its pendulum pointing straight down, unless you lie the clock on its back.
The laser itself is class IIIA, with a frequency of about 635nm. With four AAA batteries it is capable of shining clearly and brightly for a long time. Class IIIb and above are banned in the US and many other countries, so other "red" lasers will NOT be brighter or project farther.
Ultimately, the tool must be designed to assume that the surface will be parallel to its beam, which is as strong and accurate as the law allows. Despite that, your wall might not be the same color or shape as someone else's, and minor differences in offset could make performance appear better or worse.
Sticking it to the wall is as necessary as it would be with a conventional level; it would leave your hands free. I had a set of laser balls that could not be used any other way, and had short battery life. With this product, it's very useful even if you never use the adhesive pads.
The bottom line is that the laser is the best in its class, the mechanism is as accurate as gravity itself, the batteries will keep it going for a long time, but the switch should have been designed better. You can use it properly with minimal training. But it's very easy to misuse and some surfaces will not allow it to project useful lines despite the accuracy of this tool.
UPDATE 2:
I gave mine away to a TV repairman who was impressed by it. I bought a new one and the switch has been redesigned and no longer looks like the one in the picture. I had no problems with it sticking or being difficult to use. If you find one as pictured (lines across the entire switch) then you have an old one that might cause problems unless you wear kitchen gloves. If it has the lines only running up to the middle, and decreasing in size, you have the newer one that does not have any problems with the switch being difficult. (updated 9/2009)
Customer Review: I'd like to take it back., if I could...
Summary: 1 Stars
The lines fade away and back. The prism is more like a toy. Weak laser line, hard to see, not a good tool. Thank's for nothing.Customer Review: It worked exactly as claimed!
Summary: 5 Stars
I picked up my STRAIT-LINE Intersect Laser Level at Wal-Mart on one of my 3:00 AM "I can't sleep, I'm going to Wally World to see what's on the Clearance Aisles" forays. (It's funny how my ex-girlfriend once called this one of my "charming idiosyncrasies" but more recently has declared it to be "aberrant behavior".) I bought the level solely because it had been marked down from $48.73 to $15.00.
I didn't have an immediate use for the level, so after showing off my plunder I put it the "Fling Room". (The Fling Room is an extra room in which all things that don't have a proper place to be stored are "flung". This does a remarkable job of eliminating clutter in the rest of the house. You fling stuff in, and periodically sort some things out and find a permanent place for them. My ex deemed this to be abhorrent behavior.
I decided that I should partition off the end of the solarium for a new fling room and convert the current fling room back into a guestroom. I needed to mark off a right angle - using the Theorem of Pythagoras - but I didn't have a dummy for the other end of my chalk line. I remembered the intersect level and used it to start my project. It worked exactly as claimed.
My level now has a permanent place to live where it is readily available. Additional uses for it are limited only by imagination. An example: I have another lady friend who is an obsessive-compulsive picture straightened. Before I know she is coming over, it is very easy to hold the level against the wall and level or plumb artwork, photographs, and mirrors. She has a very good eye and can see that nothing is out of line. It must drive her nuts.
Pythagoras brings something to mind. There were once three Indian squaws on the reservation that were with child at the same time. As luck would have it, they all gave birth on the same cold, cold winter day. The first squaw had an eight-pound boy and her brave presented her with a deer skin to keep them warm and cozy. Then the second squaw had another eight-pound boy and her brave supplied her with an antelope skin to protect them from the cold. Finally, after a long labor, the third squaw gave birth to a sixteen-pound son. Her brave gave her a hippopotamus skin. This illustrates that the son of the squaw of the hippopotamus is equal to the sons of the squaws of the other two hides.
Customer Review: It works well enough for scientific work
Summary: 4 Stars
I have used this for close to a year now.... It some of the problems I have read in the other reviews like the switch being a pain.... and the lines getting lighter..... But both were curable ...the switch ...cured by taking off the "decorative knob" and just using the original slide switch.... sometimes the marketing guys get TOO fancy.... and the changing of intensity was cured by just cleaning the contacts on the battery compartment.... We searched all over for a 90 degree intersect with one line extending both ways and it is virtually impossible to find in the pro area or DIY area.... many 90 intersect with one line meeting another at right angles but not a perpendicular on a line. My last one got damaged when it fell from a scaffold and tried to buy another and no one had any left..... found it again here on Amazon and ordered two...just in case
Ron Sauro
NWAA Labs
www.nwaalabs.com