A compact, dual‐beam laser deflection system was built, mainly from commercially available parts. While the detector and electronics yielded noise levels at the theoretical level for the detector, pointing instability of the laser led to an increase in noise by a factor of about 103. The dual‐beam arrangement gave only a factor of about 4 improvement over the single‐beam mode due to alignment and drift problems. Further improvement requires a feedback system to minimize signal arising from common‐mode beam displacements.