Introduction

If you drive a Volvo, care about crash safety ratings, never turn traction control off or wear safety glasses when working in the garage, this article isn't for you. Go make sure your Microsoft Smart Screen Filter is on and browse somewhere else today. I'm not saying this to be mean, but if you continue reading, you will be offended one way or another. (Ed. Note - oh, here we go!)

With major news outlets like CNN, The Wall Street Journal, The Discovery Channel, Esquire and Maxim Magazines covering stories of death rays, personal light sabers and every far flung story they could, Wicked Lasers had finally broken through the barrier between niche market and retail success with the Spyder III Arctic (which we reviewed), the world's first 1 watt hand held laser. The SIII Arctic really brought Wicked Lasers into the mainstream and with that success came a few failures. Many new customers who purchased the SIII Arctic had to wait several months to take delivery and there were claims of fraud and scams rampant all over the place. The issues were so far out of control I want to tackle them first in this article.

For those who kept their order in and patiently waited for their Arctic found that the device wasn't a cheap plastic toy. The build quality on the Arctic Series isn't anything like what you find in grocery store lasers, nor is its output power. If you took your Arctic and smacked someone over the head with it, you could kill them and not damage the laser housing in any way. The build quality of these Spyder III units is amazing. Wicked Lasers learned firsthand about inventory management and those issues have now been tackled. Orders are now shipping very quickly and delivery times are very reasonable.

That firsthand experience is going to come in handy this year because Wicked Lasers has a new, even brighter model that is the must have laser for 2012. According to Wicked Lasers, green light appears to the human eye 2,000% brighter than blue light. That means you can use a less powerful green laser and still get the same effects we observed with the Arctic model last year. On the other side, you can still get the 1 watt version like we are testing today and take the laser experience to a whole new level.

Try around 85 miles (137 kilometers) to be exact.