I am of the opinion that many of the poor reviews of a particular brand of laser source are based on a bad experience with a machine as a whole that may have had little to do with laser source, but because it had a MAX laser in it, then it gets part of the blame.

This reminds me of something I heard years ago (facts may different these days ) that Golden Retrievers log more human bites than any other breed of dog, which seems funny because they're not known as a biting breed. The reason is because there's so many of them, and by the sheer numbers, they log a lot of bites. Bites per capita, I'm sure will produce totally different numbers...

So, because there are likely a LOT of machines out there with MAX lasers in them, it stands to reason that just by their sheer numbers, reported problems will seem high...

--my opinions--

Regarding personal experience, and of those of the laser owners on this public forum I've been familiar with for the past 6 years or so, I really haven't noticed many complaints about laser sources proper being unreliable regardless of brand. Most issues usually refer to electronic or mechanical issues, which I've had with both my fiber lasers- but the lasers themselves have never failed to fire!

The biggest "laser source" complaints I know of, by far, is Ebay! -- which is the whole purpose of this thread, to show that a good deal, with at least some tech support, can be had from an Ebay machine. So far, I'm quite pleased.