You’re right, but for something like a consumer laser pointer that’s typically rated in mW it makes sense to write 1000 mW and not 1 W.
It makes clear how vastly different that is from the regular ones.

1000000 uWatt!

but that doesn’t sound as cool

which also means anywhere that sells them would advertise it as 1000 [GOLDEN PRESENTERS VOICE WITH HIGH REVERB] mW and I feel a lot of people wouldn’t know the difference.