We just took on a set of rental listings and we did not have interior dimensions for any of them. Consequently, I was going to have to measure dozens of rooms, and the idea of taking the tape measure to do it brought up visions of hours and hours measuring the rooms. So, I went to Home Depot and looked at their laser products. The vast majority of product were laser levels which held no interest.
There were two laser range finders. There was a really cheap one (under $20), and I avoided that. They had one other one, the Stanley Fax Max, which cost about $99. This works GREAT for interiors. I measured all 5 units in less than an hour, including hallways, entries, etc.
Just push the button to turn on the laser, point it, push the button again, and you get the reading. The label says that it is accurate to within 1/4 of an inch at 100 ft! I did put it up against a tape measure and measured some distances (less than 10 ft though). It was absolutely dead on for every measurement, to an 1/8 of an inch.
Where does it have problems? Two areas. First, when I was measuring some distances outside at a distance, I noticed that I had to have a more reflective surface to bounce the laser light. If it was dirty and was absorbing the laser light, I couldn't get a reading.
The second problem was that in bright daylight it was very hard to see the laser pointer at distances greater than 30-40 feet. You have to direct the point to where you want to measure and seeing a 1/4 inch dot at 70 feet in bright sunlight is next to impossible. When it got towards dusk, it was much easier.
There was one other problem that I had, but it wasn't really attributable to the product. The laser needs to rest on something. Trying to hold it steady at 50 or 70 feet is really hard; the pointer is bouncing all over because a slight movement of the hand made for a big arc at the other end. I almost think I want to glue a camera nut on the end of it so that I can screw in one of my tiny flash tripods; that would make it very stable and very easy to change its position.
I hope that helps.
John Hokkanen, Encinitas Real Estate
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