If I remember correctly, the cheaper Chinese lasers don't recover quickly from blanking -- if you blank them TTL with a 50% duty cycle, you'll get 30% or less average power when you were expecting 50%! (this from a post on alt.lasers testing the Aixiz 100mW $265 unit)
Hence the AOM, which doesn't have that bug. I would go with gas, but I don't want to deal with the size, current, and cooling requirements. A friend of mine has a blue-line Omnichrome 532 (ALC60x) that I've been thinking of getting running at all lines, but that project is on the back burner.