With all the laser units being released that are adding every bell and whistle under the sun we have a big gap in the market.  Why is nobody taking the slaved laser head and placing it in a small unit.  It seems like it might take a day to update the otal housing to hold a slaved laser head.   $600 and they would move a bunch of them.   Is it because people wouldn't buy the $1500 units or what?  And yes the CQBL exists for 8-900.

Visible laser have a small role and not worth the cost to most users. While looking through your NODs It is very easy to overlap your IR laser to your rds to zero it. Zeroing a visible laser is the same method minus the NVD. IMHO the need for a coalingned laser is unnecessary.

I love my CQBL-1 for a few reasons.

1.  At 12 oclock the laser is inline with the bore, so no offset aiming is required. Just point blank zero.
2. The red visible laser is a good aiming backup at night if my NVD goes down or I don't have it on me, but it is useless in the day.
3. The visible laser makes it very easy to zero at any indoor range if I don't want to zero with my NVD.
4. The lasers and mount are very low to the bore.

Do I want something newer? Yes, I would like to have a green or blue laser version that would be more useful in more lighting environments.

I also wish there were more inline laser options at the top tier. I know they build to M4 specs and have to clear the front sight base. But jeez.

I can't understand why after all this time, they haven't made the CQBL-1 with a green viz laser and ND filter.  It would be nice to not have to rely on another optic which someone may or may not own or want to own to zero the unit.  Many states do not allow night hunting so zeroing at night is an issue.  If you are going out of state to night hunt, you want to hunt when you get there, not zero your guns.

Exactly!

Steiner, are you watching this thread?

I don't think they give a crap.  If i have to fiddle with zeroing usiing a second optic, I'll just buy a cheap UNI-IR in green, make an ND filter using a small rubber cap with the bottom cut out and a smalll disk of welding shield glued in, and spend some $$ on ammo.

I keep hearing that green lasers are brighter than red lasers. Red lasers suck etc. That may be true at an indoor range with fixed lighting and a grey backdrop but where I'm at we have leaves and grass that are.... green. So in my experience anywhere outdoors the red sticks out better. Considering it is usually cheaper, better battery life, more stable in cold temperature, easier to focus and better in foliage old say red has its advantages. I have seen a dozen people at out range bragging that there green lasers are brighter and when we compare outside the red nearly always wins or its a draw. Ymmv.

I'm wondering if this mod would throw off the POI if the filter is not true and it doesn't end up in the same spot every time you put it in front of your laser.

Having used both in the woods, in my experience the green was still clearly more visible. Unless you are in a full shadow canopy I can't imagine red ever coming close.

Green or red aside the slaved laser units are a known commodity and a simple otal housing redesign should be able accommodate the change with minimal cost imput.  The risk of it not being rugged enough should be minimal.

I paid under $625 delivered for my CBQL.

All I know is the A4 V2 is all I've been ever asking for. Kick ass ir illuminator, ir laser, vis laser, white light.

Everything in one package. No more extra white light. Saves roughly 6 ounces. One less thing to brake/have batteries for.

As long as this thing is sturdy and no glaring deficiencies I'll be all over it.

They just need to hurry and get it to market for us civi's. I'll sell my D2 the second the A4 V2 is out.

Eh. Got 250 lumens on my helmet.  Another 900 light on my belt.

And if anything else on the unit breaks it's the same as any other unit breaking.

For the same reason the AN/PAQ-4C is essentially a dead end.

Long story short--most of your manufacturers are going to invest first in government/agency-type sales of these devices, and therefore, they're going to invest in the development of products that meet those needs--then adapt them to "civilian legal" degraded power levels. And most of those customers are no longer interested in aiming laser-only packages--they want onboard illuminators.

The CQBL-1 exists to fulfill a specific requirement, which is why it is configured the way it's configured, but the lack of continuing such demand is also why it hasn't been "updated," the CQBL-1 is, in some ways, an "artifact" of a specific use-case, but it's really not worth developing much further than that.

See as well things like the Insight CIVL which was shown off a couple of times--but we got, thankfully, a commercial ATPIAL instead.

Ultimately, your bargain shoppers are going to be looking for bargains, and are unlikely to want to pay extra just for a slaved VIS laser.

Meanwhile, most customers are looking for a "full-service" unit that has an onboard illuminator, which most agree is much more useful than a slaved VIS laser, to the point that if you were going to give one up--most people would choose the VIS laser to give up before giving up the ILLUM, which leaves you with... the DBAL-I^2 (SS).

~Augee

In my experience, integrated WL/IR LAMs are much better in theory than they are in the application.

Not only does it make for an awkward situation if the single device goes down as Sam mentioned, but IMHO, a white light and IR LAM are different tools for different purposes, and they should maintain separate controls and settings, not just for redundancy, but also for control deconfliction--you never know when something is going to be on the wrong setting and/or you need to transition between VIS and IR. VIS overrides and fancy controls are all good and well--but it's much easier to simply keep functions that should be separate--separate.

~Augee

I agree, separate is better.  That said there are better illuminators and much cheaper and good enough IR lasers out there for civilian use.  Who cares about mil/le use?  They have acess to a much higher level of equipment not available for civilian use.

I'm in if they ever make a green laser CQBL.

Now that's what I'm talking about! Nice rig.

Edit: I just ordered the CQBL fusion mount too.

Ok, where do you get one that low?

Got mine for that on Amazon.

Amazon is $999 right now

DVOR/OpticsPlanet sale (can't remember which).

Well you guys are certainly welcome to you opinion but I still disagree. If we follow your logic we shouldn't have anything combine. The ir laser. The ir illuminator. Anything else on the rifle. Anything else on our kit

If it's reliable there are very few negatives to having an all in one unit if it performs.

Besides, there are examples of things breaking on, let's pick i2's, and the other features still work. Weight savings. Space savings. Less worrying about interoperability between manufacturers switches.

The one downside I will certainly admit that if something on it breaks and you have to send the unit in you lose everything else. But I have more than one nv set up rifle so for me that's not really an issue.

I'm excited as shit about it :) going to see if I can have the patience to save up the $whayever it costs and keep the d2

WRT the CQBL, I got mine on the EE, basically NOS (it was LDI branded, but new in box).

getting a laser slaved to another laser isn't cheap brother

you're talking about precision optical instruments that must tolerate recoil and maintain their respective positions

they already exist, but they're not going to be cheap.  not nor would they widely differentiate from what is already available in the current market

I don't care about cheap.  All I want is a green viz laser I can see in daylight and colder temps, and a ND filter for a finer dot for hunting small game without a giant bloomed out dot occluding my target, and a IR laser that is slaved to it.  Make the color of the viz laser on the CQBL to green and offer an ND filter-done.

I'd settle for an OTAL in IR with on-board push button to fire laser besides the cable. And having a high/low setting would be tits also.

I have no use for visible lasers, although it would make zeroing a little easier.

Holosun LS221G?
about $550-$650-ish

I mean, it doesn't have an ND cap (whatever that is) but it has everything else you're asking

I want to try the LS321G (or whatever it is that has IR Illum). I don't want to spend the $!

LS321 $465 at Grabagun

You're gonna make me spend more money today...

No kidding. Perfect for my trash can gun.

That's what I'm talking about.  I can put a pinhole in the cover and glue in a small circle of welding shield and make an nd filter.

Well for under $500 with an illuminator, I bought one.  I read some posts on it an will try it as is first and not worry about the nd filter yet.  Some have said the dot is fine enough for precision work and does not bloom out too bad unless used on something really close (like feet not yards) or when pointed at something reflective (of course).  One reviewer said if the QR mount is not robust enough, it can be swapped out for another.  We shall see.

Good! Keep us updated...

I hope it can stand up to the massive recoil of my .17 HMR.  I don't know too many people in the US protecting themselves at night from criminals or ISIS.

Is it really class-1? Or higher output on the illuminator?

Also, will it take a TNVC TAPS plug?

An update.  The unit arrived this week.  It seems sturdy enough, and the mount seems ok to me (i am not going into combat with it).  So I start fiddling with it and mount it at 12 o'lock on my .17 HMR vermin slayer and start to ponder how to sight this thing in.  This particular gun only has a pic rail on the receiver.  First thing I learn-you cannot see even the highly touted green laser in bright sunlight.  This has nothing to do with this particular laser, just all lasers in general.  Cannot sight in my red dot and then put the laser dot on it because I need a riser for the red dot.  With both items on the same rail, the only thing you see in the red dot is the back of the laser.  So I order a cheapo UTG riser for future use and take the red dot ou from behind the laser.
I continue messing with the viz laser on a wall in my house.  something does not seem right.  I put the gun with new optic in a rest and point it at a wall like 4 feet away.  The dial on top of the opic adjuster says  L and R.  The adjuster on the 3 o'clock side says U and D.  I start twisting the adjusters to pu the dials in the middle.  The one on the top (12 o'clock) that says L/R is moving the dot up and down, not L and R..  The one that says  U an D is moving the dot L and R!  WTF?  I get on the phone and call Holosun.  A guy named Brandon says he'll pull one from stock and try it.  Sure enough, the dials work fine,  but they are mis labeled.  Can you imagine the language when I tried to sight-in?

Now that I know it I can work around it, but really disappointing on an almost $500 item.  When I figure out how to sight it in, I wiil test some of the other features, like the IR and illuminator part and post an update.

Don't know what class the illuminator is.  Don't know if the specs would even be correct.  I planned on using a separate illuminator any way.
Don't know or care much about the TAPS plug.  I have no use for white light while night hunting animals.
FWIW here are the specs:
ls321 specs

Thank you!

I'd love to hear about IR and IR illum once you test that out.

Yes, I saw the specs. But we all know published specs on foreign made lasers are often wildly inaccurate.

By asking about the TAPS, what I was really getting at is this: Does the thing take any mil-standard plugs? Insight, Steiner, Surefire, etc...

EDIT: Please let us know if the illuminator can light up a target more than, say, 200 yards away. If you are getting usable illumination out past that then it probably isn't limited to 5mw.

I looked everywhere but can't find anything on the plug.  I don't have a steiner or other one to test it with.  There seems to be no info on the illuminator either.  I will post an update when I try to see how far the illuminator works.

Hmmm.  The 321 does look interesting.  Not to mention just the Viz/IR laser 221.  Don't know if these units will work out but the features and price point are there.  I wouldn't know why they would go to all this trouble if the cables weren't Steiner/SF compatible.  I would guess they are.  We shall see.    

Before we get into the obligatory arguments about US vs Chinese shit, etc.  I will say that from a purely operational perspective, of an armed civilian, I am digging the Halosun offerings.  I have been R&Ding 2 x 515 MRDS's because they are the only sights with a 65 MOA reticle circle I can find.  Well besides you know who.  They do have some quirks, as has been pointed out.  In this case the adjustment screws being mis-labeled.  On the 515's, the front lenses were glued in slightly off-  but it hasn't affected the performance, just the cosmetics.  

I think in the end, there will always be those that will only use top end, US stuff, and those that experiment with other offerings.  Like many things these days, I don't think you will change the mind of one side or the other.  If Halosun ends up being a viable option, well and good.  If not, then we'll all move on.

Bottom line, I think the OTAL makes an excellent laser, for my use.  If paired with a good Viz/IR light, and a good switch like the TAPS, I don't think you're giving much away.  If the Halosun offerings will work as well as the current Steiner versions, and offer you additional features, as needed, then again, when paired with good light(s) and switch, you would have a great alternative to the higher priced, mil-derivative units.  

I think the all-in-one housing argument (if it goes down) is valid, but then again, with an OTAL style unit, you still have separate viz/IR illum, not to mention an RDS reticle, not to mention BUIS's.  SOT brought up an excellent point in another thread about not getting too locked in to one mode of fighting, but train with various sighting systems that might be required.  I could even say at these prices you could afford to have a spare.  But then someone will say two turds does not equal one ham sandwich.

So what do you want just a vis and IR?