Not sure if this is normal, but there seems to be a lot of light leaking out around the beam. Even when I focus is down to a dot, there is a line of light extending out.
On the wall without taking a picture through glasses
High-power diodes tend to look like that. They sacrifice beam quality for raw power, and one axis of the output will have a much higher divergence then the other.
OK, thanks for the info. The laser seems OK and will easily burn things, but thought this looked a little weird, so wanted to ask. I also have a 445 nm 2W (this green one is 1W), and the blue laser looks a lot cleaner.
The "lower" wattage (1-2.5W) 445 diodes tend to have pretty good beam characteristics for a multimode diode. That's why it looks better compared to your green one.