Another interesting point about this (sorry, but I could go on all day about laser hardware costs) is that there are some weird points in power breakdowns where the cost jumps by a lot due to the nature of diode combining or color balance.
Let's look at 2 more real world examples.
Example 1, a 500mW projector will almost always cost the same as a 1W projector, if that 1W projector is blue heavy.
So a common configuration for low powered projectors these days is to use a set of Single Mode RGB diodes, the most commonly used set meters out at 400-500mW after optics. One trick that is sometimes done to get more power out at a lower cost (and therefore make the laser more attractive when browsing online) is to use a multimode blue instead of singlemode. The multimode blue costs the same or less than the single mode, but you can get way more power out of it. The end result is that it looks like a way better deal to get a 1W projector than a 500mW projector, but if in reality the 1W projector is 700mW of blue mixed with 150 red and 150 green, it's going to look like shit. The beam specifications will also not be properly matched, so even if you turn down the blue diode, you'll get a white core with blue on the outside.
Example 2, Why you almost never see a balanced 1W projector.
There are 2 main ways to go about making a 1W projector:
1. You can PBS 2 500mW single mode diode sets. This looks absolutely incredible. Great beam specs, beautiful color balance, it's a really slick setup. The disadvantage is that it's expensive relative to power level due to the optics required. Very few commercial manufacturers do this because it's hard to explain to non-laser people the benefits and the most of those benefits only really show in real life. Laser beam specs jsut don't translate to video well. I think Kvant had an 800mW for w while that was built this way and I still have no clue how they made any money off of it.
2. You can use the common multimode RGB set to combine 1 638 red with 1 520 green with 1 445/450 blue. This can produce a good beam with just 3 diodes (or 4-6 if you use the 637 single mode reds) but at this point the system is capable of 1.8-2 watts. As a manufacturer, there's absolutely no reason not to turn these diodes up to this power level and you have a 2W laser which can command a higher price.
This rabbit hole goes pretty deep, but it's also why most 20W projectors are really 22W, why there are hardly any 4W projectors out there, why once you get over 30 watts everything gets very red light, etc.