Cordless Plunge Saw Comparison! [2021] || Makita, Dewalt, Festool, Bosch & Metabo track saws] 

Excellent! cheers Spencer

My pleasure!

Thanks James 😁😁

cheers mate, both awesome units.

Thanks Colin (Mike)

wow, that's great feedback, cheers Jan

I’ve only used the Festool and the DeWalt. For me the Festool wins hands down. But I think in the UK the DeWalt is a lot cheaper. Especially if you already have the DeWalt batteries. The DeWalt range is second to none so I have no issue with that preference.

The Dewalt, in my opinion is the Dewalt truly needs to be updated but Dewalt isn’t going to take the time or spend the money to do so. I own a construction company. All of our trim crews run either Festool or Makita. This isn’t because they dislike Dewalt. 100% of them run Dewalt table saws, Dewalt 780 miter saws, and the majority run Dewalt cordless power tools or Milwaukee cordless power tools. I have used the Makita for several years but sold it last week. I’m trying to decide on the replacement and am watching reviews.

Cheers pal

cheers Ibis

thanks for the feedback Sgten, love to hear it! :)

@@OZToolTalk quick question, what do you think about the cordless Mafell track?

@@OZToolTalk I don't understand how the Mafell track saw wasn't included?

Agreed. DeWalt makes great tools, but their blades have always been crap.

How does a diablo blade fit on a track saw? Do you mean a Freud industrial?

hi Matt. thanks for the feedback. The Metabo's cut capacity is the largest, but is 61mm on the track (66mm off track). That is covered in the spec sheet we provided but we can't talk about everything, and I don't personally think that is a big deal. The joiner of the Metabo and Bosch is cool. we have a separate post on Instagram all about tracks which may(?) talk about this, can't remember. Cheers

The TSO joiners are great for the makita / festool tracks. Self-aligning, accurate & easy. No straight edge. Easier than trying to handle a 3m track. The festool guide rail square in Australia is the TSO square rebadged but the joiners are not and seem to have problems. I don't get why makita didn't put a separate measurement on the plunge depth to allow for the thickness of the track, like festool. They're all pretty nice, though.

awesome comments, thanks squirt. i don't think the others have a scoring feature specifically. can't people just set the depth to 1-2mm though and achieve the same thing?

Thanks for sharing!

mafell supplier in Melbourne carrum downs. expensive thou but worth it.

Glad I could help

Yeah its a real bummer atm :/ (Mike)

The price here in the USA is much more reasonable at a high of $70 USD before 20%-25% Bosch accessory discounts which are fairly frequent. Sometimes the go much cheaper on Amazon: I got a couple for $30 USD for the 48-tooth blade, and $20 USD for the 24-tooth blade. Only those two blades are available right now here, not any of the specialty blades.

Great feedback thanks clansman!

Cheers for the comment Mike

hi Owen. it was released JUST before we made the video public, a couple of months after filming :/

cheers Dave

I don't like festool but I use their cordless track saw. It's a ball ache having 4 festool batteries dedicated just to that saw because I don't use anything else festool. I'm getting the 40v makita as soon as I can in England.

@@jrsuk1170 (mike) You def need to assess how the battery situation works for you, if you have other Festool gear its a NO BRAINER. Always interesting to see what people run and why. 👌🏻

cheers TK. yeah it's not really possible to have the best of everything on one line!

Just curious, are you sure the Makita 40v has kick back protection? I would grab one if it did but when I rang Makita, they told me it didn’t. Unless I spoke to someone who didn’t know.

It definitely does. My boss has one on site and it performs really well 💪

@@OZToolTalk Very cool. Thanks for letting me know.

yeah that's a pretty decent middle solution ...

possibly....

Quite a few brands have a cordless m class vac too 💪

cheers for the feedback!

of course, but not supported in Aus

Yeah for sure. It certainly didn't appear to have changed in terms of feature set or usability.

I've never heard of a blade-left plunge saw.

Kreg makes corded version

oh that's awesome!

Hey Lachlan, although I am not one of the Oz Tool Talk Team, here’s my two cents: I have worked a lot with the Festool corded and worked with the DeWalt corded. Besides that, I have seen most of the track saw reviews and tests available on YT. The festool is a blast, no question. The Dewalt is great, too, especially with a different blade. Check ten square metre workshop‘s channel here to get more insight into this saw. The makita has got a lot of good reviews so far, but the blade deflection was mentioned several times. In my opinion, with the festool you get: 👍 absolutely great precision, super clean cuts 👍 good power 👍 one of the best UXs on the market 🤨 a premium price line (for a premium tool, to be fair…) With the Dewalt you get a mix of really good engineering with really bad design decisions, based on: 👍 great power 👍 a great UX on the plunge mechanism (once you get used to the plunge mechanism, you gonna love it. Your wrist will not have to move with the saw but stay in the same position through the whole cut. And to be fair, you won’t be using 5 different track saws all day long, so that comparison doesn’t count here in my eyes) 👍 a top performance battery platform with an enormous variety of tools 🤨 as mentioned, a really strange UX with the bevel settings - who doesn’t add stops at 45 degrees and doesn’t include a minus 1 bevel these days? 🤨 an unusable saw for left handed people (the corded one doesn’t have that problem though since there is no battery to crush your knuckles) 🤦‍♀️ an absolute fail at 45 degrees: when you tilt the saw to 45 degrees, the cut line will no longer align with the 90 degree cut line on the track but will be some mm off. My personal biggest wtf moment with this saw. Again, this does not apply to the corded version which stays in line no matter if 90 degree or any other bevel. I have the DeWalt platform on all my 18/54V tools, but I won’t buy the cordless track saw. If the offset cut line, the missing 45 degree stop and the not really good dust collection were not a deal breaker, the impossibility of use for lefties like me is it. After all my research, the winner is the Metabo. Precision is great, power is great, UX is great, it’s on the CAS, uses one battery only (can be super annoying charging two batteries with only one charger…), the price is great. To me personally, there is no reason to get a festool or a mafell. I might have the money, but I don’t use a track saw every workday for 8 hours a day. If that was the case, I’d get a mafell. My most important points are: • accuracy • power • ease of use • one battery instead of two • price As mentioned, they all might have their pros and cons, but for me, the metabo is the best overall deal. Hope that helps 🙂

@@trashes_to_treasures hey man, thank you so much!! You’re an absolute legend for writing all this up for me. It’s been a hard choice as I am on the dewalt platform too! Only thing is I don’t want to over invest in the cordless festool hence the corded option vs the 54v dewalt. I wouldn’t be using it every day but when I do want to use it, it could be outside on jobs, could be in the workshop cutting timber down for furniture which I’d prefer cleaner and more accurate cuts so I think the festool is the way I’m going to have to go, even could see if I could pick up a cheap dewalt to try out first and then maybe getting the festool later on sale Thank you again! I really appreciate it

@@lachlankren4231 hey Lachlan, thank you for your words. I think this is what RU-vid should be for - sharing knowledge and helping each other out 🙂 Yes, getting a used Dewalt Saw to test (and verify / falsify the offset!) might be a good option. Your requirements sound basically like the ones that I have - not in daily use, very accurate cuts are needed sometimes, but not on a daily basis. I can only repeat myself: check out the Metabo (Model KT 18 LTX 66 BL) if you haven’t already. I watched a lot of reviews of many different plunge saws currently on the market, and this one seems like the best overall deal to me. I currently could even afford a mafell, but honestly, why should I buy it? If I am honest with myself, I’d never fully use it to the extent it is actually capable of. I think about the same goes for the Festool. It’s a beautiful saw made for everyday professional woodworkers; so if you’re trying to find a good excuse to satisfy your fetish and get it, I’d be totally with you 😇 I’ll buy the metabo once my job is finished and payed and hope I get what I am expecting. Curious which one you will get. Maybe let us all know in a review video!

haven't tried one, but it looks SUPER similar to the 18x2. I would personally prefer the Festool for it's precision and user experience. check out this review from one of my favourite youtubers - ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-PcZGGNyRuww.html

It is. It has either just come out or coming out very soon in Australia.

Looks like it has JUST come out :/ goddamit ;) haha. I think the Scott Brown Carpentry did a review on it? Maybe have a look. I'm guessing it's a very similar unit to the 18x2.

yeah that's interesting, and the reason we don't usually score price :D

Please watch the whole video. We talked about this at length. There are no blades that fit them all.

that sucks

cheers Ben

fair enough Rambo ;)

our lips are sealed I'm afraid ;)

Yes, I just got an ozito track for mine

It wasn't out at the time of filming 😬

Interesting, we'd need to check. Thanks (Mike)

its great gear, I also think it's very underrated and underutilised.

why would you use a track saw for such thick material regularly?

@@OZToolTalk we make and install period timber windows and doors. They are regularly 46-48mm thick to match existing detail and accommodate double glazing. Bottom rails are cut on a bevel (usually 7-10°), so effective cut depth is reduced, plus we cut on a track. The Festool TS 55 does the job though

not available in Aus

check out our Instagram for a full post on all track/saw compatibilities. short answer: Bosch (and several others) can work on Metabo, no other saw can work on Bosch's track.

@@OZToolTalk just checked it out thank you👍

@@OZToolTalk that is not correct. Metabo will also fit on Bosch track.

@@danielg1550 Hmm, that's disappointing that we missed that. We had ALL the gear there and didnt pick up on that, thanks

Hahah Well explained 😂 (mike)

Point taken, new audio ordered 👌🏻$ (Mike)

Cutting through 40mm of hardwood is PLENTY hard enough, and much tougher than cutting through aluminium sheet. Having said that, I'd always advise cutting through alu slowly...

Not in Australia

@@OZToolTalk sorry for your loss brother. I bought a Bosch 18v gdc305 on your recommendation, thanks for that.

Rothoblaas in Carrum Downs Victoria sell and support Mafell power tools.

no, we have an Instagram post covering all the track and saw compatability.

We have since found that a single distrubutor in our state has them. We were not aware. (Mike)

Wasnt in Oz when we filmed. (Mike)

@@OZToolTalk well that would definitely make it hard to review. You're doing a great job guys.

not in Aus

Yep you're right. Which is stupid.

not in Aus, no

You do no that mafell make the Bosch so mafell is well represendented track saws have moved on

Is the cordless one king though? I’ve no issues with my Mafell, but if I needed cordless, I’d grab the 36v Festool.

i think you're right :/

its in the spec table

what do you love about it?

@@OZToolTalk i love presence of Bosch. I never compare.

Lol ok. Im glad your happy but it was tight on the track, no smoke and mirrors here mate we just go on what we find. (Mike)

Have the dewalt and once you change the blade it leaves a great cut.Have used a mates Festool and found it under powered.Nice features but not worth the extra cost.

Cool