The output characteristic of a novel hybrid fiber-bulk laser, demonstrated with a cladding-pumped tunable Tm-doped silica fiber laser as the pump source and HoYLF as the laser crystal,is researched. Most of the heat generated via quantum defect heating in this fiber-bulk laser scheme is deposited in the fiber, and thermal effects in the bulk laser are dramatically reduced leading to the prospect of much improved efficiency, beam quality and higher output power in the 2 μm wavelength regime. Output characteristics under different pumping wavelength were experimentally studied, and it was found that the best pumping wavelength was a few nanometers off the absorption peak. Using a simple two-mirror resonator configuration,a 5.3 W polarized output is obtained at 2066 nm in a diffraction-limited TEM00 beam (with M2 of about 1.1) for 9.4 W incident pump power, corresponding to a slope efficiency of 70%.