Complete video walkthrough of the xTool F2 Ultra fiber laser after 3 months of hands-on testing. Includes metal engraving tests, dual laser analysis, and comparison with Commarker B6.
View Product PageThis is the xTool F2 Ultra, a desktop fiber laser that's actually two lasers in one machine. In this video, we're going to break down exactly what this machine is, how it performs, and most importantly, whether it's actually worth buying.
My name is Brandon, and I review maker machines on this channel—a lot of them are lasers, and many have come from xTool. Before we get into comparisons with other machines, let's talk about what you're actually getting with this one.
The xTool F2 Ultra combines a 60W MOPA fiber laser with a 40W diode laser. If those terms are new to you, the 40W diode is what you'll find on machines like the xTool S1, which ranges from 10 to 40 watts. These older open gantry style machines use diode lasers—they emit purple and bluish light and work really well on wood.
The other laser is a 60W MOPA fiber, compared to the original F1 which had a 20W fiber non-MOPA. They're definitely packing in more wattage, but the MOPA aspect is what's really interesting. It basically opens you up to additional settings for your laser.
With normal lasers, you only modify two things: speed and power. The MOPA allows you to set the frequency of the laser and adjust the pulse width, giving you a much wider range of frequencies than standard fiber lasers.
What this means in practice is that the MOPA aspect opens you up to different types of marking on different materials. You'll definitely see it advertised as enabling color marking, which it does—but I'll give you an important caveat about that later. Specifically with metals like stainless steel and aluminum, you can get different types of markings that aren't possible with normal fiber lasers, like black or white markings.
[demonstration]
Even though this has two laser sources, the way the laser works mechanically is the same for both. This isn't a big gantry that moves around your work bed like a normal diode laser. Instead, the only thing moving is a mirror within the lens assembly, because the laser is generated on the backside, travels through a cable, gets focused, and then reflects through a series of mirrors—called a galvanometer—before firing down to your material.
Galvanometer machines are really nice for engraving because they move way faster than gantry style machines. The top speed on this machine is 15,000 millimeters per second, compared to 10,000 millimeters per second on the previous model. Because you have more wattage, you can actually use more of that really high speed.
There are actually two versions of this machine. Both have the 60W MOPA fiber, but the more expensive version also includes the 40W diode. You can buy this with just the single 60W MOPA fiber laser, and honestly, I think the single laser source version might be the better choice. We'll talk more about why in a second.
The xTool F2 Ultra comes with a really nice cover that's quite dark, which is both good and bad. It blocks out a lot of light—good for laser safety—but makes it harder to see what's happening inside. The tinting is there mainly because of that visible diode laser, but you get the added protection of having a fully enclosed unit.
This cover is removable, which is a big improvement over the original F1. On the F1, dust would accumulate inside, especially if you're doing coin embossings with brass powder for 30 minutes to an hour. With the F2 Ultra, you can pull out the cover, and on the backside, you can actually pull out the fan to clean and replace it.
Like any laser, you need to think about ventilation. This has a tube on the back that you can connect to xTool's air filtration unit. If you don't have that, you can vent it out a window—the internal fans do a pretty good job of getting most of the dust out, especially with the fully enclosed design.
You've got the standard suite of safety features: an emergency stop button that completely kills power to the machine, sensors on the lid and movement sensors, plus flame detection. All the essentials are covered here.
The work bed itself is pretty standard. You get a metal work bed on top with threaded holes and corner brackets you can screw down. This is a standard format, so there are lots of aftermarket accessories that allow you to mount things directly to the machine.
The work area is 220 by 220 millimeters, which is one of the biggest limiting factors with galvanometer style machines. Because the laser shoots from a single spot and reflects through mirrors, there's only a certain distance it can travel while staying in focus. With a gantry machine, you can go as big as you want since the distance between the laser head and surface never changes.
The xTool F2 Ultra gives you two different ways to focus. One is using laser dots—a red one from a laser pointer and a blue one from the 40W diode laser at super low power. These are aligned to cross over each other when the machine is fully in focus. As you raise the material, you can see the beams move further apart, and a motor raises the entire laser head. When those beams cross, you're in focus—really easy and intuitive.
The other major improvement on this machine is the upgraded camera system. The original F1 Ultra had a single camera next to the lens, but this one has dual 48-megapixel cameras. Because there are two cameras positioned correctly, they work as a stereo system, meaning you can use the camera to detect distance and depth.
The camera accuracy has definitely improved because of this dual setup. While the original camera worked pretty well, you'd be off just a little bit, especially when trying to center something on something really tiny. With this system, the accuracy is much better when you're lining up artwork to objects in the software.
This brings me to the biggest limiting factor for this machine. If you want to do any type of cutting, you need airflow underneath for a cleaner cut and to clear dust and debris. However, cutting with a machine like this isn't as practical because of one critical limitation: there is no air assist.
It's not that xTool is trying to save money—an air assist simply doesn't make sense on a galvanometer style machine. With traditional gantry machines, compressed air runs through a pipe right through the laser head assembly, giving you really clean cuts. With galvanometer machines, the laser is generated way up in the assembly and shoots down through mirrors. There's no practical way to get compressed air close to where the laser is actually marking.
You won't find air assist on any standard fiber galvanometer machine. The only time you see this is when manufacturers combine a galvanometer with a gantry style machine, like the upcoming Excel laser or the upgraded galvo machine from Raleigh Madden.
So why is this the biggest limiting factor when basically every machine has this weakness? Because you're paying for it through the 40W diode laser. With diode lasers, as wattage increases, the laser spot gets thicker, meaning you can't engrave at the same detail with a 40W as you could with a 20W. The original xTool F1 has a 20W diode, so the only real reason to want a higher power 40W diode is if you want to do cutting—but you're losing engraving performance.
You can run 40 watts at higher speeds than 20 watts, but for a lot of what most makers do, that trade-off isn't worth it for a result that isn't quite as good. Because of this, I'd lean towards the standalone 60W MOPA version instead of paying for the dual laser setup.
Let's talk about tests. I don't go super deep into all the things you can do—there are plenty of other channels that do a great job with that. But xTool talks a lot about their color marking, and that's what I've done here on stainless steel.
Because you have a bigger range of frequency and pulse width, you can get color markings on metal. On this test grid, you can see shades of green, blue, purple, yellow, and red, in addition to whites and blacks that you can get with a normal fiber laser. It looks really cool in marketing, but here's the reality check.
[pause]
xTool has a process where you import an image, split it into vectors of different colors, and auto-assign those colors based on test grids so you can get full color images. That's really cool in theory, but it's not as practical in reality. First, you have to run these pretty slowly—this entire test grid ran at 900 millimeters per second when the top speed is 15,000 millimeters per second. The line density has to be really high as well, so these take a long time to run.
Second, the full color effect is really dependent on the angle you're looking at it. This doesn't look great unless you're at a really specific angle with the light hitting it right. Because the color is so angle-dependent and takes so much time, if you're wanting to put color on metal, it honestly might make more sense to directly print on it instead.
I actually printed this same piece with the EufyMake EV1, which is a UV printer that puts UV ink directly on top of the metal and then cures it. It's really hard to get off, and while it's on top rather than engraved, if you're just looking for color on metal, using a different approach might make more sense than spending all that time on MOPA color marking.
Where MOPA is really good is allowing you to do different types of markings on aluminum. I don't have this completely dialed in yet, but you can get really good dark markings and really good light markings on aluminum, stainless steel, and a bunch of different metals that you just can't do with traditional fiber lasers.
Because you have three times the power on this versus the original F1, you can run this at much higher speeds. [demonstration] Here's a quick test I did on brass with the diode laser—it works fine as a normal diode laser.
The biggest difference you might see, especially on the speed side of things, is with embossing engravings on soft metals like brass. The way this works is you create an image that's a height map—dark areas are the deepest and light areas are the highest. That translates into a bunch of different layers, and the laser essentially does the reverse of 3D printing, blasting away layers instead of adding them.
These can range from 50 to 300 layers depending on what you want, and each layer takes several seconds, especially with lower wattage machines. With a 60W, you can definitely run this process way faster than the original F1.
Let me break this down into a few different scenarios based on where you might be in your buying decision.
[demonstration]
If you're coming from the F1 Ultra, let's look at the numbers. The F1 Ultra has 20W fiber and 20W diode at around $3,600. The F2 Ultra with 60W MOPA and 40W diode is $6,000. That's about $2,400 more. You do get a spec bump in speed and that really nice dual camera upgrade. But if you look at just the standalone 60W MOPA version, that's $4,700, which is only about $1,100 more than the F1 Ultra.
So the real question is: how much is that extra wattage and the extra MOPA capabilities worth to you? And if you don't have the F1, is $1,100 worth spending to get the F2 Ultra instead?
If you're really interested in engraving on wood, let's talk about that $1,300 difference between the dual laser source and the single laser source. Instead of spending an extra $1,300 for a 40W diode laser, what could you get as a standalone machine?
Looking at 40W diode options with enclosure, you have some pretty good alternatives. The Creality Falcon 2 Pro at 40W is basically at the price difference. The xTool 40W diode is more expensive at $1,900. But if you're okay stepping down to 20W, you get much closer in price range and have a lot of different options.
You can get something like WeCreate's 20W option for around $1,300. Because these are gantry machines and not galvanometers, you actually have air assist and they're more set up with bigger work areas to cut things. So if I was picking, I'd get the single laser source F2 Ultra and have a dedicated gantry machine if I wanted to do cutting.
How does this stack up to higher powered fiber galvanometer machines from other manufacturers? Looking at other 60W MOPA options, you've got different form factors. Some are split designs from companies like CloudRay or Omtek—CloudRay does a good job at $5,000. Others have the laser source on the bottom or back, like this xTool design with full enclosure.
The 60W B6 MOPA from Commarker is a good comparison point. Looking at the specs, they're more or less the same machine. If you're strictly looking at specs for a 60W MOPA, the F2 Ultra at $4,600 for the single laser version puts you in the same ballpark as the competition. You can find cheaper machines, especially non-MOPA versions, but this really highlights the fundamental difference between xTool and everybody else.
That difference comes down to software. Pretty much all the other machines use Lightburn, which is incredible and powerful—I actually have a full course on it. But it's more complicated and not as user-friendly, though it definitely opens up all the settings to really dial in your machine.
If ease of use and just turning the machine on and starting to engrave real things quickly matters to you, then xTool Creative Space is kind of the best in class for software. They do some gimmicky AI stuff like generating AI art, but they're also doing really practical AI features.
They have a conveyor belt attachment that I've shown on the original F1 Ultra, and with this machine's upgraded cameras, batch engraving is way easier. Instead of perfectly lining stuff up in a jig, you can throw stuff in there and the system auto-detects edges and auto-places artwork. Then you're good to go—all because of the camera system.
xTool Creative Space is generally easier to use and still has good power underneath, just not quite as much power as Lightburn offers. So if you want a high-powered fiber machine for real work on metal, the question is basically: do I want a Lightburn-based machine or an xTool-based machine, along with all the pros and cons of each?
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A new feature I added to the website, Machines for Makers, is price tracking and deals for when machines go on sale. We actually had a pretty good price drop on the original F1 Ultra—down like $300. These prices are updating more or less daily, and I'm adding more machines as I go.
If you come over to the deals page, you can see all the different deals going on right now. With a lot of those, I might have specific promo codes that can save you money.
So what about you? Would you get the F2 Ultra? Is it worth $6,000? Let me know down in the comments, along with any specific questions about this machine that I can help answer.
Until next time, go make or break something in your shop. See you guys.
