I recently bought a desktop CNC Mill / Laser cutter kit.  The kit came with "everything you need" to get started including a pair of safety goggles.  The whole kit, with shipping from China to the US was slightly less than $300.  As you would expect, costs were kept down as much as possible which meant cutting some corners.

The laser portion of the kit is a 2.5W, 450nm (violet) laser diode module.   It's not going to cut through much but it will easily blind you.

The safety goggles supplied with the kit are blue/green tinted, plastic shades.  I hesitate to call them "safety" at all.  They may be sufficient to keep chips out of your eyes but they are not, in any sense, a form of laser safety.  I'm a bit concerned the fact they are tinted may lead some to believe they provide laser protection as well.  In fact, I've seen other vendors selling only the laser module and those shades.

General protection requirements

Laser protection is tuned to the frequency and power of the laser you're using.  Just because you have protection for one type of laser doesn't mean it's safe to use with different type or power level.  Start by determining the minimum Optical Density or OD required to block the frequency and power of your laser.  I used an online OD calculator from lia.org.

For the two lasers modules available with the kit:

• 450nm 2.5w Minimum OD Required: 3.40
• 450nm 5w   Minimum OD Required: 3.70

Protecting yourself

There used to be a Bell Helmet advertisement along the lines of "If you have a $10 head wear a $10 helmet."  The same goes for any piece of safety gear. Before I fired up the laser for the first time, I bought a pair of actual laser safety glasses from Philips Safety Products.  Do a quick net search and you can find them for $75 (USD), delivered.  IMO, it's well worth the money.

Protecting others

You should protect those around you as well.  If you'll be operating where others may pass by you should enclose the unit in a case.  I'm in the process of building one with a laser shielded view panel.  To that end, I picked up a ~12" square sheet of acrylic that purports to be OD3 from 250nm to 520nm from J Tech Photonics.  Note that even with the case, I still plan to wear the goggles whenever the laser may be in use.