In this work, we compare the thermal crystallization and the laser crystallization of hydrogenated nanostructured silicon (ns-Si:H) films in relation with their deposition conditions. The samples are grown in a low-pressure pulsed radio-frequency glow discharge of an argon-silane mixture. The laser crystallization shows a decrease of the crystallization threshold (E-cryst) and an increase of the induced crystalline fraction when the plasma duration (T-on) used for the deposition increases. No correlation with T-on is observed in the case of the thermal annealing, indicating that the modifications of the bulk structure of the film with T-on are not the main parameter in the determination of E-cryst. The role of the surface roughness in the lowering of the laser crystallization threshold is then emphasized.