TheGlowforge Prois an incredibly capable piece of hardware that offers unlimited creative possibilities, especially when paired with their tried and tested barcoded Proofgrade materials for perfect cut and engrave settings. However, it’s hampered by a limited web-only software package and almost mandatory subscription, making it hard to justify the premium price.
Glowforge Pro
The Glowforge Pro is an incredibly capable piece of hardware that offers unlimited creative possibilities, especially when paired with their tried and tested barcoded materials for perfect cut and engrave settings. However, it’s hampered by a limited web-only software package and almost mandatory subscription, making it hard to justify the premium price.
Unboxing and Setup: Little Assembly Required
The Pro set comes in three packages: the Glowforge Pro itself, the honeycomb grill bed and exhaust, and some starter materials. The materials pack is quite generous, with two full-bed size sheets of clear acrylic, basswood plywood, and draftboard, then some smaller sample sheets of hardwood, and even a little sheet of leather.
Be sure to keep all the packaging, as you’ll need it for servicing—and a replacement set is $250!
Once you’ve got the machine out of the box, a little construction is needed. No manual was included in the box; you’ll need to navigate to an online portal and register your Glowforge account. This is perhaps a gentle way of getting your account ready and used to the idea of using an online system because it happens often with GlowForge.
The instructions are comprehensive and contain short videos to accompany the steps. You really can’t go wrong. Along the way, you’ll need to unscrew various bits, pull off some tape, and install the laser head. This involves pushing in a delicate ribbon cable, but that’s about as complicated as it gets.
As a final step, you’ll need to turn the machine on and connect directly to the Wi-Fi from the Glowforge; then tell it your network details. The Glowforge requires Wi-Fi to operate; it cannot work over Ethernet or USB.
At this point, you’ll jump back to the website for the final software setup…and Premium subscription upsell.
Subscription Required? Almost
Much like other premium crafting machines from brands like Cricut, Glowforge features an online creative hub where you’ll find thousands of fantastic craft ideas—but access comes as a Premium subscription.
Upon setting up your first Glowforge, you’ll get 14 days of free Premium access, regardless of what you choose next. You can hit the Skip button at this point and forget about it forever if you want. Your Glowforge will still work for your own designs with no limitations. Well, sort of. We’ll talk more about the free tier throughout this review.
Compact Design: But It Can Be Limiting
The Glowforge offers a unique design, with a CO2 laser tube in plain view that travels along with the laser head. Most laser cutters hide this tube away in a compartment at the rear and keep the laser aligned with the cutting head via a series of complex mirrors. The result is a slightly more compact CO2 laser cutter than others on the market, though it’s still a massive machine by any desktop craft machine standards. A single preview camera sits in the middle of the glass lid and updates automatically when you close it.
At W97 x D54 x H21.5cm (or W38.2 x D21.3 x H8.5 inches), the Glowforge Pro just about fits on one of my heavy-duty shelving units (W90 x D60cm), with a little hanging off the edge. By contrast, theXtool P2 required two of theseside by side to sit safely. The actual working area of the Glowforge Pro is 279mm (11 inches) deep and 495mm (19.5 inches) wide, but it can accommodate materials up to 457 x 508mm (18 x 20 inches).
As with any CO2 laser engraver, you should also consider where the exhaust hose will go, as it’s vital that you deal with the potentially toxic fumes. A hose is included and can be vented either out of a window or to the optional air filtration device.
One final consideration is temperature. Unlike 3D printers, which heat themselves, CO2 lasers are quite sensitive to ambient temperatures. Midway through this review, winter drew into my garage workshop, and temperatures plummeted to near zero. The next day, I experienced an error I really wasn’t expecting: it’s too cold, the machine exclaimed. So I’ve since had to rethink my craft studio and move the poor fellow indoors where it can enjoy year-round temperatures above 15C.
Proofgrade Materials: Take The Hassle Out of Settings
As mentioned, if you’ve purchased a starter pack including some materials, you’ll find they’re all helpfully labeled and include a QR code. This is for the Glowforge—not you—and tells the software exactly what material you’re using, automatically, and the best settings to use. This eliminates the usual struggle with new materials to try and figure out precisely what settings work best, and if you’re using ready-made Glowforge designs, it’s literally just a case of pressing go once you’ve put the material in.
That said, I found two small annoyances with the Proofgrade Materials. Firstly, the tolerance on a full bed-sized sheet of plywood was off by a fraction of a millimeter, meaning I had to force it into the tray or shave off the side a little. Second, the full-size sheet can’t actually be cut all the way to the edge; you lose about an inch on the left and right. While I understand the benefit of being able to put in a larger material and only cut a smaller part of it, when you’re buying premium-priced Proofgrade materials specifically for this machine, it feels like they should be able to be used edge-to-edge.
Sample Projects: Camera Accuracy Can Be an Issue
If you’re cutting from a blank piece of material, things will generally work fine the first time. However, for my second test, I wanted to try the accuracy of the camera. This involved using some precut Christmas bauble blanks, and aligning a design to be cut out from within them.
My first attempt was about an inch off to the left; turning the machine on and off roughly fixed this. My second attempt was still a few millimeters out, which is a huge range when you’re talking about only a few millimeters between your design and the edge of the blank.
So, at this point, I turned to the camera calibration step. This uses a full-size blank piece of draft board or plywood to etch a repeating pattern of the Glowforge logo. It’s probably something I should have done when setting up the machine, but my introductory tutorial glitched on “making your first design,” so I was unaware it was even necessary.
After calibrating the camera, the alignment was great, but not perfect. I knocked out this little Christmas ornament in less than 10 minutes, then added some text later. Accuracy is better when items are placed in the center of the tray (that makes sense as the camera is in the middle of the lid).
Then I turned to some Proofgrade material; it was correctly recognized, and I didn’t have to adjust any settings. It just worked. Loading in a design from the Glowforge library is simple, and all the layers are ready-made with the correct settings. All you need to do is fill in the blanks and move the design to where you want it on the material.
Here’s where the real strength of the Glowforge lies, I think: it’s incredible to have settings that just work without having to mess around burning a test pattern for each new material, experiment, and endlessly waste bits. Sure, the Proofgrade materials are pricier than going down to your local DIY store—but you’ll waste a lot less.
I also made some keychains from the supplied Proofgrade leather. This isn’t a material I’m familiar with at all, so it was great to have those settings already dialed in. Both the cut and text engraving worked perfectly the first time.
Slate isn’t officially in the materials database, but I found some settings that gave great results anyway.
This bottle holder from Etsywas my most complex creation, mostly using Proofgrade plywood.
Pro Passthrough Mode: Work With Larger Materials, Sort Of
The working area is always the biggest limitation with craft machines, whether they’re laser cutters or 3D printers. But the Glowforge Pro has one neat trick up its sleeve, which it calls “Pro Passthrough” mode. This allows you to open a slot at the front and back of the machine and then pass in larger sheet materials. The camera keeps track of your design and tries its best to line up your cuts as you feed through the next part of the material.
Unfortunately, it’s still somewhat limiting. I found it wasn’t wide enough to work with standard sheet material widths of 600mm (24 inches), the smallest sheet materials such as plywood and MDF sold here (in the UK, anyway). So, I first had to cut a larger sheet down to size. Then, of course, without a conveyor feeder, you have to either prop up the material or stand there holding it. I had to push a little through the front slot (you load from the rear) to prevent it from warping, which is yet more wasted material.
The first time I tried this, I messed up the process. While standing at the machine and feeding through the material for the next part, I noticed the web app displayed a message “Now taking pictures, don’t move your material”… which I already had, and the next part of the alignment failed. Thankfully, you also have the option to align the cut manually, but despite my best efforts, that still resulted in it being approximately 1mm out (which you can just about spot in the photo above, along the center line). Again, this is likely a consequence of only a single alignment camera—I’m not sure the automatic process would have done any better, mind.
Software: Web-Only Is the Biggest Drawback
The Glowforge Pro requires use of a web app to operate. There is no local software available. For the most part, the web app works well enough, with the tools you’d expect and some other magical bits like automatic puzzle cuts (for Premium users, anyway). You shouldn’t ever be lost, and Glowforge projects will walk you through every step. But I do have some concerns.
While both free and Premium users are forced to use the web app for everything, as a Premium user, you’re given access to “high-performance servers” to process your design. That means that free users might have to wait a lot longer for theirs to process in the cloud. In practice, I didn’t notice a difference once my Premium trial had expired, so it may be a negligible difference being oversold to make Premium users feel better.
The reliance on a web app also means that if anything happens to the infrastructure on Glowforge’s end, you’re out of luck. Your machine will be functionally dead until it’s fixed (or isn’t). Living in a rural area, I have a sketchy internet connection at the best of times. If Starlink goes down (as it frequently does when it rains, the clouds are a funny color, or the dog sneezes), I can’t use the Glowforge.
There’s little in the way of design tools—things like inserting a simple line are difficult. You need to head over to the menu, chooseInsert a new line, attempt to locate it on the canvas, then drag the start and end points to where you actually want the line to be.
The biggest issue I found is that it tends to grind painfully slow when adjusting a complex file. These weren’t significant enough adjustments for me to warrant opening the original file externally and reimporting it—just deleting or inserting a line here or there. But this extreme slowdown can seriously hinder a workflow, and it’s not because I’m using an underpowered machine. It’s because it’s a web app.
One last point I’ll make is that some fundamentally basic features, like adding text to your design, are locked behind the Premium subscription, which is especially galling when you consider that it can’t even handle multi-line text. A similar fate awaits the basic mirror object functionality. Premium services should add advanced features, not take basic ones away.
Glowforge Pro: Not for Everyone
TheGlowforge Prois a compact and incredibly well-made bit of kit that’s perfect for a small-scale hobbyist business—if you can justify the premium subscription that’s all but required and price your products accordingly so that buying Proofgrade materials makes sense. It’s super easy to use, guiding you along the way and removing the need to tweak your settings endlessly. You’ll find a lot of value in the library of premium design templates that can be customized and sold.
But for everyone else that wants to work with standard material sizes or wants to use non-web-based software, there are more accessible options out there that don’t rely on a subscription model. They won’t be nearly as sleek as the Glowforge Pro, and will require you to figure out your own material settings, but ultimately you’ll get better value and more features.
