One of the craziest things about living in the future is that anyone can own a laser. Lasers kind of snuck up on us as a species, and I don’t think we’re ready. If we don’t play our cards right, they’re going to get into the hands of AI—and we all know where that leads: Kill bots.
Just kidding, it’s already too late. The TOOCAA NOVA, the self-proclaimed world’s first AI laser engraver, is already here. It promises accessibility, AI-powered design, and a compact, all-in-one package. Luckily for humanity, its AI power is overstated. But as a premium hobbyist-level engraving system, it still has a lot to offer.
The NOVA is available with a 10W or 20W laser diode, and with or without a rotary attachment. Each package includes smart air assist, a live-preview camera, 10,000 AI credits, a cutting panel, and a 730-day warranty. For this review, TOOCAA provided the fully equipped 20W rotary bundle, which retails for $2,111. By contrast, the 10W option without the rotary attachment sells for $1,352. In a crowded laser market, that’s a big ask. A similarly specced 20W Creality Falcon A1 Pro costs $2,117, offers a larger work area, and is backed by stronger software.
The TOOCAA NOVA’s value proposition hinges on accessibility and AI. On beginner-friendliness, it largely delivers: the machine is plug-and-play and intuitive enough for novices to go from unboxing to engraving in about 20 minutes. TOOCAA Studio, the included software, has limitations we’ll cover later, but it’s functional as a starting point. The NOVA’s AI integration, on the other hand, is superficial enough that it might as well not be there at all.
“At its core, the TOOCAA NOVA is a competent machine and one of the most mechanically complete starter packages available.”
For a product billed as “World’s First AI Laser Engraver”, this seemed odd. But the discrepancy between the AI-heavy marketing and the half-hearted implementation became part of a trend with the TOOCAA NOVA: Big ideas with limpwristed follow-through.
The hardest part of this review was separating the marketing from the machine. Which is a shame, because as a compact laser engraver, it’s actually pretty good. Had the NOVA been sold on its strengths, this review would be nothing but praise. Instead, over-promising and under-delivering have left us with a series of needless “own goals” to cover.
But we’ll start with the good.
At its core, the TOOCAA NOVA is a competent machine and one of the most mechanically complete starter packages available. With LightBurn, it’s an excellent option for small workshops or solo creative setups. It’s compact, quiet, easy to maintain, and powerful enough to tackle difficult materials and routine projects. The A4-sized work area is small, but still offers enough advantages to make it a competitive choice for hobbyists.
The TOOCAA NOVA’s white protective shell and orange-tinted viewing port are made of decent-quality plastic, looking and feeling remarkably like the multifunctional xTool M1. Almost suspiciously so. Inside, the all-metal work area has a recessed, removable floor plate. Sitting atop it is a three-piece blade-style cutting surface, which provides better airflow than traditional honeycomb mats and makes clamping and squaring workpieces much easier.
The rotary attachment, which lets users engrave on cylinders, is easy to install and operate but not terribly stable. It’s a standard light-duty chuck system with no tailstock. The chuck itself is fine, but the clamps are not ideal. With outside clamping, the soft plastic teeth often struggle to grip the workpiece.
There’s also an inverse option, but it isn’t better. It uses pegs to apply pressure to the inner wall of a cylinder. It works well with small, light objects, but struggled to stabilize a 16-oz YETI. Even when it seemed secure, the thermos would slump under its own weight once rotation began.
Pegging was awkward, even with practice and determination—I just couldn’t get used to it. Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but I’d take a strong chuck with a big tailstock over this setup any day.
The 20W laser diode is just as easy to install and, fittingly, the highest-quality part of the machine. Its housing includes an autofocus sensor, an integrated air-assist nozzle, and a magnetically attached cover for the replaceable collimating lens. For rotary use, the laser can rotate 90 degrees by loosening two locks on either side of the gantry. The tabs are substantial and index well, keeping the laser reliably straight in either orientation.
Cutting and etching performance is solid. The stepper motors are impressively fast, reaching 36,000 mm per minute, and the 20W laser has more than enough power to etch stone, cut wood, and mark soft metals. Operation is incredibly quiet—at full speed with air assist running, all you hear is the pump’s dampened hum and the laser beeping away with a whimsical musical cadence. I don’t have a decibel reading, but it’s about as loud as an aquarium.
As a LightBurn-compatible laser, the TOOCAA NOVA is fine—not exceptional, but serviceable. The features meant to set it apart, however, don’t work in LightBurn; they only function in TOOCAA Studio—software that’s been streamlined to a fault.
TOOCAA Studio is designed to make laser engraving accessible to anyone who can operate a printer. But it’s so simple that it limits usability. Basic configuration and calibration options are missing, which is a problem because the software isn’t tailored well to the NOVA.
Take the camera, for example. In TOOCAA Studio, the live preview isn’t actually live. It provides refreshable screengrabs that can be overlaid on the canvas. However, the overlay isn’t accurate, engraving a few millimeters below its target. It’s difficult to compensate for this with material reference marks because the image is wildly overexposed. The cutting area has etched calibration points, but the camera will always report that they’re obscured. There are no controls to solve any of this.
Zeroing controls are absent, too. Performance relies on the canvas knowing the laser’s position, which isn’t always the case. Even fully updated, the controller and software can become misaligned. Framing in this state can send the laser hurtling into parts unknown, slamming into the side of the case and trying to push its way to freedom until the stop button is hit. The cycle repeats after power-down and can only be fixed with a full factory reset.
The rotary attachment has issues as well. The software only has inputs for diameter adjustments, not length. Oddly, the laser’s max position is over the center point of the workbed; you lose half of the potential engraving area. On a 297mm workbed, users are limited to the bottom 150mm. There’s also no option to rotate the canvas, so designs go from left-to-right orientation to an awkward top-down orientation.
These limitations aren’t inherent to the machine—they don’t exist in LightBurn. This is proprietary software that can’t fully manage its hardware. It’s bizarre. Stranger still is the documentation. To access the user manual, users scan a QR code embedded in the NOVA’s touchscreen menu. Unfortunately, that code links to the manual for the TOOCAA L2 laser, not the NOVA.
Poor optimization is one thing, but then there’s the enshitification layer. Some of it, like the material identification cards, is innocuous. Other parts, like the AI, are more cynical.
“I really wanted to love the TOOCAA NOVA, but in the end, I had to work to like it.”
The material ID cards are meant to streamline projects by automatically adjusting cutting parameters. You buy a material from TOOCAA, scan its ID card on the laser, and you’re off to the races. In practice, scanning takes longer than simply selecting the material from the embedded dropdown menu.
And finally, there’s the AI—or rather, the lack of it. The “World’s First AI Laser Engraver” simply uses a generic generative AI plug-in inside TOOCAA Studio. The model isn’t tailored to engraving; it’s basic text-to-image and style processing. Enter a prompt, spend some credits, and drag the image onto the canvas. Yes, you have limited credits. But if you run out, you can import images from any other AI service and get the same result.
I could go on, but I’m already wildly over my word count. This was a tough one. I really wanted to love the TOOCAA NOVA, but in the end, I had to work to like it. For absolute beginners, I’m not convinced the accessibility features add much value. They may, in fact, do the opposite.
For intermediate users who don’t need the convenience features, the TOOCAA NOVA is at least worth a look. It’s not the best value or the most capable, but it is uniquely portable and self-contained. For creatives with space and noise restrictions, the NOVA fills an important gap in the market that may be worth the premium.
