lots of these are pulsed, primarily to avoid excessive local heating (burning) of the tissue being lased. these can have peak powers in the kilowatt range!

I just wrote “weird” because trying to explain 250mJ delivered in 15ns became too much math to put into a comment I wanted people to read.

also your point of output contamination is spot on! +1 to avoiding cheap “powerful” lasers :)

That’s what fucking around finds out for you. Luckily I never got to the stage in my project where I put on my budget non-certified goggles, and powered on el cheapo laser diode. But if I can help somebody else to not trust the nominal values, then I’ll chime in when this is brought up.