The 3D laser scanning technology has been reached by more and more users in the last years, thanks to a new market of low cost devices, more affordable for simple, non-professional use. The educational use is one of such environments, and its didactics purposes gives the opportunity to test new technology from a variety of different point of views. 3D laser scanning, for example, is very promising in environments like Design university education, where the control of the shape of an object is one of the topics discussed in courses, and one of the main focuses of the product design profession. This paper describes the use of this technology in students and research lab, and its metrological characterization, especially on the relationship between performances and object optical characteristics (like gloss and color), object position and ambient lighting. It is to keep in mind that, in a student lab, geometry reverse acquisition is one of the activities done to understand products layout: the knowledge of influences of surrounding and material characteristics on scanner performances is a key factor to improve the performance when low cost scanner are involved. The characterization performed gave the opportunity to students to test how such devices work, the output reliability, which are the inherent issues and what kind of strategies should be introduced to enhance the scanning quality, indeed one of the main problems of these low cost devices.