Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I have to admit, I've always been one of those pro carpenters that thought DeWalt saws looked and worked cheaply. Like many of you, I have used every chop saw and dual compound miter saw imaginable. Years later I became a woodshop teacher. When I started, the old teacher before me had an nice new Makita and good old Hitachi stuffed in the back tool storage room and this saw set up prominently out on the shop floor. I decided to leave it there and see what would happen over the course of the school year. I watched this saw get day in and day out abuse from students who cut too fast, started the saw while touching the work, let the saw run too long, let the saw snap back to its upright position, chopped wood not against the fence, never cleaned the blade or used wicked dull blades all day. I had students using pine and the saw covered in sap that hardened to amber. (hey I can hear you judging me fellas, I had thirty-two inner city kids in these classes [no injuries-knock on wood]. One week I had students blazing away for hours chopping hickory and pecan, leaving the saw hot to the touch. Long story short: you couldn't find a better field testing environment than a high school shop class. Despite this merciless abuse, this saw cut perfectly accurate. It is loud, and the brake doesn't like the kind of resharpened heavy blades I use, but nonetheless, after school, I made fine furniture with this same saw. I made tight perfect miters with it It could chop cleanly through 12/4 rock maple full of nails on a dull blade (I know all of you are wincing, that's why I used a beater blade) I used it to chop and cut shoulders on giant 5 in dovetails in 8/4 Bubinga. or trimming off a 64th of the same without it drifting away...always leaving my work dead on 90 degrees. We cut dirty two by fours, weird laminates, acrylic, you name it, this saw performed. This proves to me that this saw has earned it's chops for the jobsite. Period. I wish I could say the same about DeWalt biscuit joiners.