tl;dr: making a first-time scanner purchase for hobbyist & professional use in UK clubs and festivals. Which suppliers should I be looking at, and what non-obvious things do I need to know?

Hi all. I'm a UK-based club lampy, been a laser fan since around 2010 when I was an active member of LPF and used to collect handhelds. Last few years I've ran quite a few laser shows using Pangolin, and worked alongside some big-time laser techs. It's been a bit of a dream to own my own laser scanner and I'm finally in a place where it sort of makes sense and the purchase will pay for itself eventually.

Considering grabbing 2x PR8000 RGBs - 8W RGB scanners from OptLaser.... (plus a FB3, clamps, ILDA cables, an eStop, etc.). They're $600 each at the moment which seems like a reasonable deal.

As Chinese sellers go, OptLaser seem to have a good reputation here (and with others I've spoken to IRL). There are a few bad reviews from 10+ years ago but lots can change in that time.

Two main questions:

1) Are there other suppliers in this price range I should be considering? For better ratio of price to quality.

2) Is there anything I ought to know before I make this purchase? For example, I'm seeing mentions of laser safety laws in the US but can't find anything in the UK apart from the stringent rules about crowd scanning (which I do not plan to do).

Thanks all! Happy lasering!