Laser is pretty knackered on now, its crackling a lot as I forgot to switch it off a few times and left it on over night. A nice feature would be a soft start as if you are trying for a very accurate cut, the initial jerk has a tendency to knock the wood out a touch and get the cut line goes slightly wrong. This is more of a problem when trying bevel cuts for plinths where the cut has to be accurate and the panel has a very smooth finish. The screw down clamp works fine but is tiresome to use. There is only one and is very tedious to put it on the other side for left hand cuts as the little thumb screw is very fiddly to get in and out
The tool is not that accurate, no matter how many times I mess about it never seems to be spot on and has a tendency to come out of line after a few months of DIY use. It’s not way off like some of the cheaper makes but just means that you have to be careful when cutting rather than rely on the markings on the base plate
The spring mechanism is very smooth and nice pressure though and depot cutting is fairly easy without the need for the depth stop. When cutting gloss panels I like to give the first pass of the saw a skin of a cut just to get the line clean.
The 300mm sliding range is great and very happy with it. Only problem is that the arms are quite short it width so actually cutting something 300 wide means the wood panel board is quite unsteady on the base plate
Dust bag is pretty useless, collects about 50% of the wood chips and material frayed so can’t unzip it without a bit of work
Blade is surprising good actually for a cheapish tool! I use it a lot, hit a few nails and put down an engineered floor. Still giving good cuts. It’s a feature that is overlooked I think with cheap tools. The Erbaurer blade is a 48T one (I think) so you can get by on a lot of jobs without the need for buying another blade.
In some ways I regret buying this saw as although it’s worth the money I am becoming a real fan of Pro tools and get great satisfaction of the build quality associated with them. However I see a 8” Bosch GCM8S is £250 or the green version (PCM 8S) is £200 on Amazon which makes the Erbaurer about right price (£140). In hindsight I think I would have stumped up the £200 for the Bosch given it has good reputation and you can get parts readily.
Still 4/5
Note I just checked Screwfix, I see they have a new range of Erbaurer which makes this post somewhat irrelevant!
However the 8” is £90 or so!, it does look a lot more gimmicky than what I have though
