These beamsplitters consist of a pair of precision right-angle prisms carefully cemented together to minimize wavefront distortion. The hypotenuse of one of the prisms is coated with an all-dielectric beamsplitter coating optimized over a broad wavelength range. The four faces are antireflection coated with a broadband multilayer dielectric coating to minimize surface reflection losses over the wavelength range. Because the prisms are held together with optical cement, these beamsplitters are not intended for use with higher power lasers.

Cube beamsplitters are formed by cementing two right angle prisms together. One of the two prisms has the partially reflective metal-dielectric coating applied to its hypotenuse. In Newport's cube beamsplitters the coated prism is marked with a visible dot. Incident light should enter the prism with the coated hypotenuse in order to minimize power passing through the optical cement. Alternatively, a beam entering via the uncoated prism results in more than triple the fluence in the cement (the transmitted component, plus a double pass by the reflected component). With higher power beams this can result in degradation of the cement.

Four broadband multilayer coatings are offered covering the 420–680 nm , 620–1000 nm, 900–1300 nm, and 1200-1600 nm wavelength ranges. An unpolarized beam is split into two orthogonal, linearly polarized components. P-polarized light is transmitted, while s-polarized light is reflected, both with negligible absorption. The extinction ratio is better than 500:1, yet it averages 1000:1.

A crossed polarizer optical setup can be used to easily control beam attenuation by rotating a second polarizer in the optical path. In this setup, a HeNe laser beam passes through a polarizing beamsplitter cube, separating the light into two orthogonal linear polarizations. A polarizer on a rotation mount is placed after the beamsplitter. Rotation of the second polarizer illustrates how the intensity of transmitted light varies with polarization angle. This demonstration highlights how light can be manipulated and attenuated for different optical systems by using polarization. Proper safety precautions should be followed, and beam blocks or barriers should be used to safely terminate stray beams. See the parts list of the shown setup example.