ToolBane

Signs are they’ve been working on a brushless OMT for some time, but when it releases I would guess it will probably just be marketed as the “compact” replacement for the current one, even though diagrams online suggest it could be worthy of “subcompact” status. Even though I’m a fan of the line in concept I don’t have many current tools I expressly want a subcompact for. Makita does so well just making their regular tools compact that the subcompacts are often overkill for me. Like why isn’t their 4” brushless angle grinder considered “sub-compact”? I don’t think it even makes sense to go smaller than that. Of the ones already out, I think the one I would be most likely to get would be the brushless recip saw. The circular saw is also pretty compelling except I don’t want blade right, so maybe a blade left model. I could totally go for a subcompact brushless die grinder...that would basically just be the shameless Dremel knockoff I’ve been wishing forever for Makita to make. A brushless sheet sander would probably qualify as subcompact whether or not they would choose to market it as such. Oh and a subcompact brushless screwdriver, based on the subcompact drill, analogous to the drivers they have in their CXT line. That would be pretty swank.

Just don’t tell the lady

https://www.makitatools.com/products/details/XBP04Z https://www.makitatools.com/products/details/XBP05ZB I was just wondering if Makita was still doing anything with their popular subcompact line then they announce this little bandsaw. Nice to see they’re still moving with that lineup.

I’m not huge into yards and consequently don’t have a huge yard. But I have huge trees which means lots of leaves. Huge leaves. I’ve mostly gone with Ryobi stuff to handle most of my yard things but this is one tool I think I won’t be able to resist. https://www.makitatools.com/products/details/XBU04ZV

20V Max actually IS the same as the 18V nominal standard that everyone else uses. It’s just a difference in how the measurement is taken...Max is when a fully-charged battery is sitting idle while nominal is the battery under load across its entire operating range.

Personally I would do the brushless 6.5”. The 36V is going to be heavier, the brushes will cost you in efficiency, and it looks like it’s discontinued to boot...being an older model who knows if it’s even that much stronger than the the newer brushless 6.5”.

Lithium batteries cost enough purchased alone when you can often just as easily buy them included in kits with brand new tools. Not that I am huge on sounding like a paid ad but if this is just for personal/home use I would check the Ryobi Days sales going on at Home Depot here: https://www.homedepot.com/b/RYOBI/N-5yc1vZm5d If you are a really diligent type about your lawn though you may still find upscale brands to last longer, have better efficiency, and better ergonomics though.

The Dewalt Flexvolt “worm style” is probably the strongest out of a handful of very large, excellent saws, but what do you plan to cut? All the most powerful saws are large and hefty, and we’re at a point now where most newer compact saws can cut through 3/4” plywood all day without fuss. If you’re just going to be cutting 2x4s or slicing through 3/4” stuff in your back yard, you may find all the biggest, baddest saws are overkill.

Oh, I do too...almost as much as I like the idea of Makita coming out with bigger batteries 😁

Temperature control requires a LOT of energy. Just another reason why they should be making larger batteries.

Welcome to the forums. If your lights aren’t working exactly the way the panel labeling indicates, exchange it.

That IS an impressive amount of impact torque and it almost certainly explains the large head, as that’s almost certainly where they put the impact “hammers”

I don’t have this saw so all appropriate disclaimers apply, but YouTubes I’ve seen tend to find Ryobi’s brushless circular saw is much more prone to stalling out in everyday cutting if running non-HP batteries, to the point where reviewers find the saw a little underwhelming if run that way. These would have been 4Ah units. There are 3Ah and 4Ah batteries that are HP that some online comparisons show as yielding discernibly better performance than the non-HP 4Ah on high-draw tools, but just by impressions I suspect most people would still want more. I do have other Ryobi tools, and generally speaking they have more mechanical friction than more expensive brands, which to me should be expected. They are built to a price point, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but it is what it is. If I were to purchase this saw, I would look to primarily use my 6Ah or 9Ah HP batteries on it. If you have to run smaller as a matter of immediate budget, just be prepared to be patient with the saw and cut slow and easy.

It’s great for the very humble purposes I intended it for, but people should understand that going in before buying it. It’s a very dated design, basically a carryover from a previous generation of 12V tools Makita has largely abandoned. Although the ergonomics are top-notch regardless. I very much like my Makita tools. Like most Makita stuff in my opinion this one feels superb in the hand, is easy to use one-handed, and is also light enough and shaped conveniently that I can attach it to a pole and prune elevated tree branches from my balcony. The limitation relative to other very small 12V saws is it’s rather low-powered. But for my particular uses this was the smallest and easiest to use tool for relatively light tasks I’m not often having to do, and it was only $70 when I bought it. (Strangely, the price jumped up to $90 shortly after I purchased.) Within the very narrow window of my needs it was the best product within the battery platforms I have, and yeah perhaps even across the market. Although for the kinds of tasks most people will buy a recip saw for, I would usually first direct people elsewhere, including among Makita’s numerous other recip saws. I also second Jronman’s post above about the multitool. Much like this recip saw I bought, Makita‘s 18V OMT is a pretty dated design. It has one really good feature which is the rubber grommet at the battery interface to protect the battery and interface from all the vibration. You will see tool reviews of other companies’ OMTs where these vibrations wear batteries out and they no longer fit tools properly. Besides that, the Makita makes decent power and performs just fine overall, and while there’s nothing ergonomically wrong with it in my opinion, it isn’t remarkably compact compared to most of the market which is usually a hallmark for Makita. Another matter Makita usually excels in but didn’t here is this multitool is not significantly less “buzzy” than other brands. I believe they now only offer one 18V model that has a quick release lever which works great...but it has no light. Personally I don’t care about the light but for some tradespeople this can be a major hang up. For me it’s another “occasional-use” tool I bought because I’m already on the battery platform so it’s just convenient. Makita makes a number of top-notch tools but within their product line these two happen to both be quite a bit “long on the tooth” and it wouldn’t surprise me at all if Makita releases considerably improved brushless replacements in the near future. Fein on the other hand I have no direct experience with, but they are widely regarded as the best maker of OMTs. Which isn’t a surprise seeing as they invented them, after all. If I had to use multitools for a living they are the first I would look to demo. As I only need mine very occasionally I’m not terribly motivated to pick up an entire battery platform for just one tool.

That shouldn’t be an issue, it’s strange your other batteries don’t fit. Is it a 2Ah perhaps? Also check relative prices for 6Ah vs 5Ah. In the US at least you can often get 2x5Ah batteries for the price of just one 6Ah, and other than run time there isn’t going to be any appreciable difference.

Exact same sentiment about that price with me and I refrained from buying it for a while in the hopes that the price would settle down after a bit like all the other miters have, but following a convo on social media I was made aware of a number of things suggesting Makita may withdraw availability of this saw in the US. Supposedly at some point HD had them on sale for almost half off to clear their inventory and now they no longer carry it. Wish I could have caught that sale. Now I only see it from a handful of other vendors mostly at or even well above the original release price of $500. I wallowed for a bit about having to eat the cost but ultimately decided from a safety standpoint it was the best decision for me (you can probably imagine cutting small pieces out of thin shatterable plastics with a 10 or 12” miter can be a nervous proposition) and the peace of mind I feel already cutting small plastic pieces on a semi-frequent basis it’s absolutely worth it. Hopefully they are looking at bringing their sliding 6.5” miter they allegedly may already have out in Japan to more markets. The pic I saw of it suggests Makita went back to a more typical detenting mechanism which hopefully will be more flexible to cutting angles just off the detents, like fitting trimmings on walls or window sills that weren’t installed perfectly perpendicular in the first place. I imagine for most that would have much broader utility in a similarly diminutive package. Hopefully that makes its way stateside. For my specific needs a slider isn’t needed and the smallest footprint possible is more desirable and less risky vs waiting to see or getting the 7.5” slider already available as a plan B. For most people who might consider this though I imagine the “wait and see” approach makes more sense.

I saw someone who claimed to have asked Dewalt PR and his words were they responded that they have “no plans” to bring it stateside. He didn’t post the actual response though, so I don’t know if they really worded it that exact way.

I got this just yesterday. Decided I absolutely love it. Which is especially funny as I’m pretty sure I said somewhere in this forum however long ago this was first getting announced, I thought this was going to be too “niche” of a product. Certainly at least for the US market, where I happen to live. But although a second miter is probably not something most people are going to really ever think about, I’m now of the mind that if you do, something like this is basically perfect. Not long after buying my 12” slider I realized how awesome this little miter would be for cutting a lot of the small plastic pieces I frequently do in a lot of my projects. I already never really enjoyed cutting them on my previous 10” or 12” miters before, but especially with the Makita’s sliding rails obscuring visibility of the workpiece during left-angled bevel cuts, cutting small plastic pieces became a decidedly undesirable task. And then I happened across someone posting how much he liked this 6.5” on social media, and suddenly this little tool started to make a lot of sense. None of that’s probably interesting to anyone here, though. But I will say, more generally applicable, this little guy makes mitering little things a lot more fun. It’s size makes it a lot easier to feather into small cuts, and the much lower rotational inertia during cuts takes out a lot of the trepidation I previously have had cutting “brittle” substances like plexiglass. Wood is of course trivial to cut through for such a small saw. The accuracy is pretty solid right out of the box, at least for my one sample. Set next to a digital protractor, the factory miter detents of 15, 22.5, 30, and 45 degrees are all calibrated well enough that any error is not visibly discernible to within a tenth of a degree. One thing anyone contemplating this miter should probably be aware of though, is how the detents are handled is pretty atypical. There’s a knob you loosen to allow the miter to swivel, and then it moves in and out of the detents via a completely internal mechanism. Very interesting solution and I’ll have to see how that works in the long term. Perhaps it’s their attempt to address the oft-reported issues people have with their aluminum detent plates on their larger saws wearing out rapidly. They must really not like the idea of steel detent plates which are status quo for so much of the industry. The biggest limitation I see with this particular implementation though, is there is no way I have noticed to toggle the detenting off, in the event I need an angle just barely off a detent, say 24 degree or whatever. I’ll have to see how often I come across that as an actual limitation in practice. My guess is most people won’t. I think that’s the biggest design idiosyncrasy. Pictures at bottom are just some plexiglass trinkets I slapped together as initial testing for this little saw. Basically to view cell phones free-handed (like while eating, etc).

Surprised myself picking up Makita’s 6.5” miter saw. Going to go into more detail on it over on the Makita-specific area, since a full discussion of it would belong over there anyway.

Yeah...from the get-go it didn’t sound like a 7.5” was going to be adequate for the tasks you were describing. Although I actually think a 7.5” or so may be the best second miter saw anyone can get...because it covers 90+% of what people use miters for, and does it more comfortably than larger heavier miters...most people DO occasionally need more capacity, while not having room for more than one miter. It just is what it is. For most people I think a 10” even sans slider is plenty. Although there were occasional challenges along the way, I was able to get by with one for a number of years myself. For those who need more, a slider may be more likely to be the more immediately useful thing vs 12”...but sliders tend to cost more. It’s a lot of extra parts instead of just bigger versions of the same parts. It just is what it is. I have no direct familiarity with the Ridgid. It is a house-brand, which I don’t disparage for DIY purposes at all. With that in mind I would suggest giving both the Metabo HTP and Kobalt a look along the way. They’re both less expensive than the Ridgid, and most people who own them don’t seem to have anything negative to say. Some Kobalt miters are actually getting very positive reviews of late, and that can’t be an accident. I haven’t gotten a direct look at either brand but would expect their quality level to be more on the level of Ridgid than Ryobi. A quick drop into Lowe’s to check them both out can’t hurt. The worst that can happen is you are able to determine they are decidedly inadequate, and the $120 surplus the Ridgid costs is more than worth it to you. Sounds like a fair trade to me.

Actually a decent number of companies do non-sliding, single-bevel 10” miters for around $200. The funny thing is, it’s a similar cost of entry whether it’s Dewalt or Makita as it is for a number of “middle-tier” brands. If a non-sliding 10” is guaranteed to never be inadequate as far as capacity is concerned, it seems an easy decision. If one can make the move fast, Lowe’s has a $200 sale on 12” single-bevel Dewalts: https://www.lowes.com/pd/DEWALT-12-in-15-Amp-Single-Bevel-Compound-Miter-Saw/1001053564 Lowe’s also presently has a Metabo HPT dual-bevel 12” on sale at $200: https://www.lowes.com/pd/Metabo-HPT-was-Hitachi-Power-Tools-12-in-15-Amp-Dual-Bevel-Compound-Miter-Saw/1000883818 They also have a Metabo HPT dual-bevel 10” slider on sale for $250: https://www.lowes.com/pd/Metabo-HPT-was-Hitachi-Power-Tools-10-In-Slide-Miter-Saw/1002652924 Kobalt has a dual-bevel 10” slider for $250. Ridgid has a dual-bevel 10” for $225. Makita has a single-bevel at only $210; it appears older and is probably better suited for the percentage of people who want a bit more accuracy and aren’t bothered by the absence of detents (which aren’t always very accurate anyway). It also does have side slots to attach Makita support extensions. I don’t consider that an exhaustive list at all especially when different people are going to have different priorities, but as far as decent corded miters for $250 or less that aren’t frequently leaving your garage they are a good start.

I was never particularly ecstatic with the accuracy of my past Dewalt 10” (the current basic corded model) and 12” miters, but that doesn’t at all mean they were behind the rest of the market on average. I couldn’t fault the reliability or power of either of them. From your description, it sounds like a 10” covers pretty much everything you do, while a 7.5” slider is longer in one dimension and shorter in the other for what you need. While maybe not as sexy, Dewalt’s basic corded 10” is also cheaper and has a smaller footprint. It weighs the same as the 7.5” slider at about 40lbs, which doesn’t strike me as an amount of weight that most guys would find cumbersome. A cursory glance isn’t making me believe the 7.5” cordless slider has any additional features, either, beyond obviously being cordless and a slider. No dual bevel or adjustable stoppers or anything. I haven’t seen it, but iirc someone here mentioned Dewalt has released a 10” Flexvolt slider in Europe, and you’d expect it to make its way here before long. If you don’t need to rush to your purchase.

Definitely depends on the make. In terms of hard numbers the Makita 6.0s are not worth the premium, they cost about twice as much as 5.0s. In practice I think to make it worth it would involve high-draw something where 6.0 vs 5.0 manages to be the difference between charging once before lunch or charging twice etc. Over enough time, then maybe the price premium becomes worth it. Otherwise just given the numbers provided by the OP, I probably wouldn’t feel 6.0s to be worth it even with brands priced more directly proportional to rated Ah, just because the extra time of running is so insignificant. Although other things could be going on. Maybe after a few charge cycles it will behave more closely to rated performance, for example. I’ve heard this talked about more than directly been able to discern it, however. I only have a handful of batteries, and not in a ton of different sizes. I don’t use them per any consistent routine plus batteries get swapped out between multiple tools often over multiple days so even very obvious differences I have measured (like 5Ah vs 3Ah) is easy to not notice in practice. Another thing that could factor into a decision, would be if a 6.0 battery was using 21700 cells while everything below it was using 18650s. Then the potential increase in current output capacity with high-draw tools can make the price premium worthwhile for some people in some applications.

I recently noticed the price for this 12” Makita 36V miter is now essentially the same as the corded model, so figured there was no reason to wait any longer to buy. Even while I have no major projects for it immediately. Just did a few test cuts putting together a couple small things and it seems pretty good so far. Nice dust clearing as is often mentioned by others, smooth mechanism, surprisingly well calibrated out of the box. I skipped the max efficiency blade straight away for a Diablo that is also suited for cutting plastics, same as that on my table saw.

Yeah the problem is definitely electrical and replacing everything is generally going to be cheaper than troubleshooting to isolate the problem. Something simple refusing to turn on is a really nondescript problem too. Not the kind of thing that can be diagnosed by random people on the internet remotely.