[Retric]

You’re way off, that’s 5 milliwatts per square cm times the surface area.

A 1 foot cube, has 6 faces of ~30 cm * 30 cm or 5,400 cm2. 5,400cm2 * 5mw = 27 watts. Of course 2 inches from the surface is a significantly larger box.

Of course that’s a legal maximum, most devices should be well below it.

[ganzuul]

You can melt stuff with 27W. Doesn't pass the smell test.

[Retric]

Sunlight is 93w/square foot, this would be under 4.5w/square foot good luck melting something at room temperature with that. I think you have a poor intuition about the difference between point sources and energy across an area.

Anyway, math is math but presumably this is why that’s the legal limit. It’s low enough to be safe while high enough not to be expensive for manufactures.