Measurements of beam stability for mid-infrared (IR)-emitting quantum cascade lasers (QCLs) are important for applications that require the beam to travel through air to remote targets, such as free-space communication links. We report beam-quality measurement results of narrow-ridge, 4.6 mu m-emitting buried-heterostructure (BH) QCLs fabricated using ICP etching and HVPE regrowth. Beam-quality measurements under QCW operation exhibit M-2 < 1.2 up to 1 W for similar to 5 mu m-wide ridges. 5 mu m-wide devices display some small degree of centroid motion with increasing output power (< 0.125 mrad), which corresponds to a targeting error of similar to 1.25 cm over a distance of 100 m.