xTool P3 Review: What the 80W Flagship Changes

The xTool P3 is the company's flagship CO2 — an 80W machine with a 36-inch bed, a motorized lift base, and a certified Class 1 enclosure — and it sells for roughly twice what the P2S costs. That price gap is the whole review. The P2S already cuts acrylic beautifully, so the only question that matters is whether the P3's upgrades earn their keep in a working shop.

We score by class and standardize published specs against owner reports rather than operating a lab, so treat these numbers as verified starting points and confirm the current configuration at purchase — CO2 flagships iterate fast, and this is current as of mid-2026.

Verdict up front

The P3 is a genuine step up, not a refresh. Power, bed size, safety certification, and workflow automation all move in the right direction. But it is a production tool priced like one, near $6,999 against roughly $4,000 for the P2S. Buy it if bed size, throughput, or a certified Class 1 enclosure is the constraint holding your business back. If the P2S's 55W and 600 x 308 mm bed already cover your orders, the extra spend is hard to justify.

If the P3's price is steeper than your volume supports, its stablemate the P2S delivers most of the same acrylic and wood work for far less. Check the P2S price on Amazon.

What actually changed from the P2S

This is the comparison that decides the purchase:

• Power: 80W vs 55W. About 45% more optical power means fewer passes on thick acrylic and plywood, and more headroom before you slow down for a clean edge.
• Bed: roughly 915 x 458 mm (36 x 18 in) vs about 600 x 308 mm. That is more than double the working area — the difference between cutting one large sign and nesting several at once.
• Speed: up to about 1,200 mm/s vs about 600 mm/s. Roughly double the raster speed, which is the single biggest lever on batch throughput.
• Motorized AutoLift base, standard. The P3 ships with a powered lift giving about 220 mm of vertical clearance and auto-adjusting for object height. The P2S reaches similar height only with an optional manual riser.
• Certified Class 1 safety. The P3 carries a certified Class 1 rating; the P2S, though fully enclosed, is rated Class 4. For an apartment, a school, or a shared makerspace, that certification can be the deciding factor.
• Smart rotary and conveyor workflow. The P3's rotary uses LiDAR mapping for a 3D preview and batch processing, and its conveyor feeder is integrated into an auto-positioning, autofocus workflow that cuts manual handling.
• Optional 5W IR module. Like the S1's infrared add-on, this extends the P3 onto bare metals and some plastics that a CO2 alone cannot mark.

Where the extra money is and isn't worth it

The P3 is worth it when your bottleneck is capacity or safety, not capability. A shop turning away volume because the bed only fits one blank at a time, or one that needs a certified Class 1 machine to run in a shared space, will feel every dollar working. The doubled raster speed alone can reshape a production day.

It is not worth it if you already meet demand on a P2S. More power and a bigger bed do nothing for a shop whose orders fit the smaller machine — you would be financing headroom you never touch. The material set is the same, the software is the same, and a well-tuned 55W cuts the same acrylic beautifully. Cross-shop the value-focused OMTech Polar and the polished Glowforge Pro before you assume watts are the answer, and see the whole field in our comparison hub.

Throughput in practice

The spec that reshapes a workday is speed, not power. Picture a tray of thirty engraved coasters. On the P2S at about 600 mm/s the raster fill is the clock; on the P3 at roughly 1,200 mm/s that same tray comes off the bed in close to half the time. Multiply across a production day and the P3 is not merely nicer — it is measurably more units per hour, which is the only upgrade justification that survives contact with a spreadsheet.

The bed compounds it. A 915 x 458 mm bed nests several signs where the P2S fits one, so you are not just cutting faster, you are cutting more per job and re-homing the head less often. Owners moving up from the P2S consistently report that the motorized lift and auto-positioning workflow remove the fiddly height-and-focus steps that used to eat minutes between jobs. None of that helps a shop already keeping up on a P2S — which is precisely why the honest recommendation hinges on whether capacity is your real constraint.

Materials and safety still set the rules

More power does not change the material law. The P3 cuts cast and extruded acrylic, wood, leather, slate, and paper, engraves glass and coated metals, and — with the IR module — marks bare metal. Feed it cast acrylic and the 80W tube clears thick stock in fewer passes. It still must never see PVC, vinyl, or any chlorinated material: chlorine gas corrodes optics and harms lungs, and 80W moving fast does not make that safer.

An 80W CO2 cutting acrylic at speed produces real smoke and real fire risk. Even with a certified Class 1 enclosure, run serious extraction — a strong fume extractor or ducted vent — keep fire suppression at the machine, and never leave a cut unattended. Pull starting settings from our settings calculator and prove them with a test grid on scrap; the bigger bed just means more product to ruin if you skip that step.

Who it's for

Buy the P3 if capacity, a certified Class 1 enclosure, or metal-marking reach is the wall your shop keeps hitting, and your volume can amortize a near-$7,000 tool. Stay on the P2S if its 55W and smaller bed already clear your queue — and put the price difference into stock, a rotary, or the marketing that fills the machine you already own. The P3 is a scaling decision, not a starter one.