Simple oxide‐insulated stripe‐geometry double‐heterostructure lasers have been made and life tested as part of an extensive laser reliability program. Early lasers have now been on test for more than 13 000 h and the first batch test has exceeded 7000 h. All the batch test lasers show slow degradation and at least 85% have rates of increase of threshold below 3.3% per 1000 h. Simple visual prebonding selection was used to eliminate defective lasers, and these results demonstrate that within this limitation lives in excess of 7000 h can be consistently achieved.