Benchtop Table Saw Reviews

In most portable table saw reviews the three words you almost never see together are Portable, Powerful and Professional. Yet those three words are exactly how we’d describe the DeWalt DW745 Heavy Duty 10-inch Compact Job Site Table Saw. This is not to say DeWalt DW745 is not without its flaws, but overall this is one of the bestselling and best reviewed table saws we’ve ever seen.

Let’s first run through some of the stats before we get to the real review of this bench top saw: It has a 15 Amp motor that rips through most hardwood like butter, it can handle a 10″ blade, its arbor size is 5/8″, it has a 3 1/8″ cut depth at 90 degrees with a 2 1/4″ cut at 45 degrees, it can rip up to 16″ (on the right of the blade) and it weighs in at just around 45 pounds. It has adjustable feet for those uneven surfaces, features a rack and pinion telescoping fence design for keeping the blade parallel and it even has a 2 1/2″ wide saw dust port that’s just begging to be plugged into a shop vac. For those of you who appreciate the finer luxuries on your table saw, it even features stems for wrapping up the cord and a built-in push stick.

First and foremost it’s important to remember that this is not some cabinet saw that you’re going to use to build that library in Wayne Manor. That being said, this benchtop table saw packs some power. Our table saw reviewers all said the DeWalt DW745 was great for ripping and cutting just about any sort of wood, even those hardwoods, as long as the job stays within reason. It’s a great saw for cutting trim, molding, wood flooring and other other small to medium carpentry work you may have on your plate. It’s one powerful little table saw.

In fact, the little size of this portable saw is deceiving at first. It’s only 45 pounds so it can easily be moved from the back of truck to a job site and back to the truck again, even for lunch breaks. The roller bars along the frame actually give you something to grab on to and the size makes it easy to shove away on a shelf or under a work bench when it isn’t in use. It’s quick and easy to set up which you may not think is very important until you’ve worked with the DeWalt DW745. Most reviewers say once they go with a table saw that is more portable and easier to set up they simply don’t want to go back.

And finally how professional is this table saw? Our reviewers almost universally praised the DeWalt DW745’s accuracy and ability to repeat cuts with precision. Many other table saw reviews of the DW745 mentioned that they had to make some fine adjustments to square the blade and settle up the fence meter but after that there weren’t many problems. In fact that rack and pinion fence gets high praise from most reviewers, noting that the DeWalt’s fence system doesn’t bind when moving, is one of the easiest to adjust saw fences around and stays nice and parallel and perfectly in place once adjusted. DeWalt made a definite decision to make sure the fence on this portable DW745 was one of professional grade.

So far this table saw review has been all praise, but the DeWalt DW745 is not completely perfect. With portability and a light load weight some things had to be sacrificed. There is a lot of plastic on this saw and some table saw reviews have mentioned that it “felt” as though the knobs and adjustment mechanisms were going to snap right off. With this light weight there seems to be some added noise, though I don’t know of any table saws I’d try to run while sitting in a movie theater or renting books at the library. There are a few bigger problems, though. The miter gauge that comes with the DeWalt DW745 is downright lousy. The miter slots are not T-slots, just regular slots that allow things to just fall out. There’s also no place to store things like the guard and miter gauge when it’s all put away, which is kind of odd because there is a place to store the push stick.

The DeWalt DW745 table saw can’t quite do it all. It can only rip to 16″ which isn’t awful, but 24″ would have been really nice. It’s a bench top saw so you can’t slap in a dado blade, but that’s probably a safety consideration anyway. The DW745 doesn’t come with a stand in the box but you can always purchase the DeWalt DW7450 table saw stand or screw it into some sturdy sawhorses if you really need one.

When it comes down to reviewing table saws for your own needs it really comes down to finding the saw that can do most of what you need while sacrificing as little as you can. The DeWalt’s bestselling status confirms that many other table saw users and reviewers agree: the DeWalt DW745 is one of the best portable table saws available today.

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