Abstract: By analyzing and comparing their one-dimensional solutions for laser-induced thermoelastic problem, the criterion of model selection between two commonly used laser heating models——surface heating and volumetric heating is presented. It is shown that using the surface heating model for calculating thermal effect of ultra-short laser pulse may lead to highly misleading results, due to the lesser ratio of thermal penetration depth to optical absorption length. Therefore, volumetric heating model should be the only choice for computation relating to picosecond and femtosecond laser heating.