Vaide Scrapper Green & Red Laser Flashlight Combo Review

2024-07-30

Here is the Vaide Scrapper Green & Red Laser Flashlight Combo review from Jani Nordman.

Vaide Scrapper Light and laser pistol light

Someone once wrote "Let there be light, and there was light". Now you can also add light to your life, and not only light but lasers as well!

For the past two(ish) months I've been putting to a test the laser light combo from Vector Optics sub-brand VAIDE. These two models are the full-size with green laser and the compact version with red laser.

My first impression, when I got them out of the box, was, WAU, these are sturdy, I've seen some eBay specials in my time and was thinking that for the price these are coming at they would be comparable to those, but no! These are quality, full aluminum build, and the buttons feel solid, actuating the buttons feels solid and picatinny rail doesn't seem flimsy, and this has proven to be right in all of my tests, no shift in a laser from bumps and scrapes, of course, drop test to sand make it move few cm in 15m but this is true with almost all lasers.

So what do you get? Light with three brightness settings Low, medium, and bright, the highest it goes is 500 lumens, plenty enough for pistol distances! (medium is 200 lumens and low is 40 lumens) And a 5mW laser, which unlike the cheap eBay specials, this is visible even in moderate light! You can see in the pictures the full bright day under cover, I couldn't get a picture but the laser was visible daytime at 25m easily but both shooter and target were in shadow, so not if the target was in direct sunlight.

The light laser combo has a built-in battery, that can be charged via the included magnetic charger, that goes to a normal USB-A socket so you can even use a portable mobile phone charger.

You get 4 buttons with the lights, on both sides so no matter which hand you use to actuate you always have a button handy. The below button is to turn on the device, change between laser, light, or both, and double press both sides below buttons cycles through the light intensity.

The two upper buttons are smart sensors, so if the device is on and you put your finger on top of the sensor it'll momentarily go off, and removing your finger turns it back on, so this also works if you have the light on and holster the firearm the light turn off and drawing the pistol turns the light back on! The only gripe is that this smart sensor can't be turned off, so you can't have it on all the time even if holstered or shooting next to cover as if the sensor gets too close to a wall or floor the light turns off, this might cost you a lot…

Battery life for the internal battery is OKAY, the drawback always with internal batteries is that they can only be charged if they run off and can't just take an extra battery from a bag and be up and running in a few seconds, so topping up is important.

These are the battery times vector promises for the bigger laser light combo:

Battery Runtime (Laser Only): 10h

Battery Runtime (LED only): ＞40min (high), ＞50min (medium), ＞2.5h (low)

Battery Runtime (Combo): ＞35min (high), ＞45min (medium), ＞2h (low)

And for the compact version:

Battery Runtime (Laser Only): ＞2.5h

Battery Runtime (LED only): 16min (high), ＞20min (medium), ＞1.5h (low)

Battery Runtime (Combo): 15min (high), ＞20min (medium), ＞1h (low)

In the past two(ish) months, I've taken them to shooting matches, and military training and so far, the only thing that has "broken" is a 1,5m drop to concrete made of the smart sensor covers to pop off, but that was easily popped back in, so maybe stronger clue is needed to fix this. The housing is made from 6061-T6 aluminum so it's robust enough for civilian use cases and water resistant (IPX4).

Many people have asked what this is as it caused a lot of interest around the shooting ranges, I can wholeheartedly recommend this if you're looking for a light laser combo, just be aware that it won't fit in many pistol holsters, so maybe take the gun and light to a shop and see what holsters fit!

Plusses

+ Build quality

+ Robust

+ Good light and visible laser even in decent light conditions

+ Mounting is easy and holds well

+ Water resistant (IPX4)

+ Low weight (82g Big version, 72g for the compact version)

+ Magnetic charger

+ Price (around 80$,€, £)

Minuses

- Sensor cover might come off if dropped

- Could be narrower