In today’s review, there is going to be a comparison between the Thor M2 laser, the 1 Watt wicked Arctic laser, and Gatling gun style Chinese 1 Watt blue laser.

All these three lasers are in the 445 to 450 nanometer blue range, and they were all advertised as about one watt. I’ve reviewed all the three lasers already and I’m going to do a comparison between each other. I know also the pros and cons of each one and which one I like best and the one I think you should buy now. All of these are centered on just the lasers themselves, and not what comes with them.

 

Before I proceed, I also want to note that if you purchase any of these lasers, make sure you practice proper laser safety. Don’t point it at any living being, or anybody’s property or at planes, or anything like that. Also make sure that you use the laser safety glasses at all times.

 

I start with its categories and not by the laser itself. Therefore, the first category I am looking at is the host.

 

The first one, the top-ranked two, and number one for the host has to be the Arctic. It has a really cool host, and it is of solid metal construction. All three of them are solid metal construction, but the Arctic just has a really cool-looking host with a bunch of cool-looking features. The Smart Switch, the little safety pin and it’s a really good solid construction. Also not neglecting how they did the lenses on the top and how you can interchange the lenses by unscrewing them up there. On an overall, I do like best the host of the Arctic.

 

Next up, I will probably say it’s the host of the Thor M2. This is because it has a nice focusing twisting feature. I do think the host of the Thor M2 is very streamlined, and it has a very solid feeling as well.

Last on the list for the host category is the Gatling 1 watt laser. I’ve always felt this one looks a little bit goofy. I mean it is of solid metal like all three and all three have the little push button on the very bottom, but I’ve always thought this one was strange looking. Some people think it looks cool, but I’ve never really been a big fan of it.

So the next category is going to be the focusing feature and the burning capability.

 

I found out that with a focusing feature, all three of them had a very similar burning capability but I like the focusing feature on the Thor M2 best. I found out that twisting the little head of the laser to the top half, makes it very easy to focus in a fine dot on the Thor M2 within a couple of seconds.

 

Whereas I felt that the second choice which is the Chinese Gatling gun style laser, took a little bit more time to focus in a perfect dot, and get some good burning going.

The Arctic falls in at the third spot. I gave it the bottom because it doesn’t even come with a built-in focusing feature. You have to pay an extra $50 to get a focusing lens to actually do some burning, which I think is awful. I mean you could rig something up with a magnifying glass. I just think its crazy with this laser being more than double the price of the other two options. It doesn’t even include a focusing capability as you have to pay an extra $50 dollars to get a focusing lens.

Since I’m talking about the topic of price here, I made a little spreadsheet with some of the different topics. For the price category, it goes in order of the Gatling gun style at about $40 dollars. Then the Thor at about $55 dollars, and then way out in left field, you have the Arctic at about $200. You can see from the pricing on the Arctic’s, just not even competitive any more. I mean maybe back in 2008 when these things were a bit more cutting edge technology.It was such that more people didn’t have these, which were harder to come by. You could have asked that price reasonably, but nowadays there’s just so many people selling one watt blue lasers out there. I think it’s crazy that they still think they can get $199 for theirs. Their host is nice but I don’t think it’s worth that extra money.

 

Next up is the powered category. These measurements are in watt, and I use my LPM to get these measurements.

 

The Thor M2 comes in at 1.275 watts, and then second place is the Gatling, at about exactly 1 watt.  Then in the third place is the wicked lasers Arctic. This is labeled 1.25 watts and it’s only actually about 700 milliwatts of power, or like 0.7 of a watt.  This is iffy, because the Arctic 1watt model I’m reviewing is an older generation. It’s from 2010 and the older generations of the Arctic’s are very under spec. I have heard reports that the newer generations of the 1 watt model are actually on spec, or a little bit over spec. So it’s tough to say if you do want to get a true 1 watt laser Arctic, look for something with a label that has a manufacturing date past 2012. This is because that’s when they started listing their power readings a bit more accurately.

 

One big category is shipping to the US. The first two lasers, the Gatling and the Thor M2 are both shipped to the US but wicked lasers will not ship their products to the United States any more. They cite custom laws about high-powered laser pointers to be the reason. However, you can see that the Thor M2 and the Gatling laser are still shipping theirs to the US with no problems. It’s kind of tricky since the law states that you can’t ship high-powered lasers. Nonetheless, wicked lasers could have just strike the word pointer out of it, and call it a module instead. They ought not to advertise it as a pointer for pointer purposes. Therefore, technically I think that would make it legal to ship it. It just really seems like a choice by them, because everybody else is still shipping them. It seems as though they’re not interested in selling to the US anymore and this is just my opinion.

 

If I had to rank these three lasers, I would say: the overall ranking would be Thor M2 in first place. This is because the Thor M2 has a very good focusing capability, good quality and a fair price. It is the highest power out of all three of them.

 

Second place would have to go to the Gatling laser. This is because it also is a true1 watt laser and the price is the best for it. Though it has a little goofy looking but it still has a solid construction and it hasn’t failed me yet. I’ve had all three of these for over a year, and none of them have broken on me.

 

Last place would have to go to the wicked lasers Arctic. This is because of the issues with the older models being under spec and the outrageous price. It also combined with the fact that they don’t ship to the US and you either have to look through eBay frequently in order to find one. Otherwise, you post something on laser pointer forums, and see if anybody’s selling on there. Overall, the prices for the Arctic are just completely inflated and outrageous for what you’re getting, especially since it does not have a built-in focusing feature. I think the host is really cool. If I was to build my own laser, I would love to take a broken Arctic, and pull out the diode and put something inside of that host. But overall I’d have to rank the Arctic last place.

 

Some things that I didn’t really touch is the beam visibility. I found it very similar on all three. There wasn’t really much difference on how bright they were.

 

However, there could be things you guys might want to know but I didn’t mention. If there’s, leave it in the comments down below, and I’ll try to get back to you as soon as possible. If you also have your own opinion on these three lasers, let me know down below in the comments as well. As always guys, thank you for reading.

 

Buy Thor M2 Here, and Gatling laser Here.

 

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