I had a GL522 as my everyday, always in the truck laser from 2012 until last fall when it died and I elected not to spend the $1000 to fix it. For the most part it worked okay, but I have a few complaints to note here as well. Main complaint is charging and battery status. My electric toothbrush has an LED that lights up when it is charging, my electric razor has a digital display that tells me how much battery is left, my $2500 GL522 had neither. The only battery indicator was a single LED that came on at the last minute before it died and was basically useless. Mine had an intermittent problem from new where it could be connected to the wall charger all night and not charge the batteries fully or sometimes not at all. I replaced the batteries, charger, cleaned the contacts multiple times, and sent it to the dealer who could find nothing wrong. Without a charging indicator I had no idea when I plugged it in if it was going to be charging overnight, without something to tell me what the battery level is it basically meant that it went on the charger every night if it was used much during the day. Pretty frustrating to spend 10-15 minutes in the morning getting the laser turned correctly so that the slope axis is aligned with the site, go to work and then have the laser die shortly thereafter. This leads to the second complaint, which is the battery door on the bottom of the laser. Now the laser has to come off the tripod to slap some D cells in it and the alignment process starts anew. It is probably cheaper to seal the battery door against water if it is on the bottom, but I always missed the side door all my other lasers had where you could carefully swap batteries without disturbing the laser setup. My last complaint is a minor one: whenever you turn the laser on it would always come up with the last grade setting. More than a few times I screwed myself by turning on the laser, glancing at the display thinking I was seeing 0.000% in both axis and going to work. Then finding out later that it really didn't read 0.000%, but 0.600% or 0.800% or whatever the setting from the last time it was used. Maybe I can't blame the laser, but my other grade lasers would always turn on at zero percent. I can't complain too much about Spectra lasers though, I bought what I think was there first rotating laser, the EL-1, in the 80's shortly after they came out. This thing was a work horse and lasted almost 20 years. My first slope laser was a single slope Spectra 1242 that I bought after the EL-1 died. The 1242 is still going strong and I keep it as a backup laser. I recently bought a Leica 880 dual slope laser to replace the GL522. I have an older Leica Javelin-s I keep around too for precision and steep slope work. The decision to go to a new Leica rather than Spectra was as much or more about the lack of a local dealer for the Spectra, while the local Leica dealer is 10 miles away.