Went with the cheap laser level, now I'm second guessing every line

I stood in the aisle at Home Depot in Phoenix for 20 minutes comparing the $80 Bosch against the $35 Chinese one, and I saved $45 but the damn thing drifts after 15 minutes on a hot job. Has anyone else rolled the dice on budget tools and ended up redoing a whole bathroom layout because of it?

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juliawalker1mo ago

Did you check if the drift is coming from the level itself or the tripod mount? Cheap units usually have plastic threads on the base and once they warm up they flex just enough to throw things off, so the laser is fine but the mount is the real problem. Try setting it on a solid surface instead of the tripod and see if the drift goes away, that trick saved me from junking a level I was ready to toss. Also worth checking the batteries, because heat makes cheap cells drop voltage and some units will actually lose calibration as the power sags.

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