You know what, forget I said anything. Let's start over and see if we can figure this thing out. Obviously there's a difference between our Arctics. I tried re-focusing the Arctic's lens and did manage to get a more concentrated dot at around 2 feet and it burned much more quickly, however, it was at the expense of the beam at longer distances. At about 30 feet, the "dot" projected by the laser was about a foot across. The best overall focus settings were what was set at the factory, but with those settings I'm back to square one as far as output seems to go. In browsing these forums, it seems like a mixed bag with the Arctic, with some measuring the Arctic's output at above 1W to somewhere below 1W. Again, I think this speaks to Wicked's quality control that we should have such disparate results, high failure rates, etc.