Best Cordless Top-Handle Jigsaw Head-To-Head

[Music] [Music] hey guys a jigsaw is worth its weight in gold due its ability to quickly customize shapes and sizes of lumbering uh i don't know seamless fit ups and installations knowing that you've come to expect or crave our head-to-head comparisons we've put together and we planned a range of uniquely crafted tests cool jigs uh and and after cutting literally hundreds of board feet a quarter inch at a time we put together the best top handle cordless jigsaw data for you and as always go and read the article if you need in-depth details you want to learn about the specs model numbers or or what we did as far as the testing criteria but in this particular head-to-head we looked at precision and accuracy we took a look at performance which equated to speed and power features ergonomics and price now for accuracy we ranked line of sight blade tracking bevel accuracy at 45 degrees cross cross cut accuracy at 90 as well as scrolling and deflection the major factors that affect the accuracy of a jigsaw are basically how well you can see the cut the liner cut and how well the saw blade stays square to the work piece or at a fixed angle during bevel um a couple of things we did during the testing is all the saws were were uh had consistent blades from diablo and we equipped um diablo three and a quarter inch 20 tpi scrolling blades and also the four inch tpi finished wood blades for these tests for the accuracy tests now for scrolling uh we used a pattern cutting curve template and we set the sauce to maximum speed zero zero orbit and we just we traced all our lines consistently uh and we used the jigsaws to make numerous cuts through three-quarter inch poplar as far as clean cutting that was the criteria we looked at getting clean jigsaw cuts with only light splintering tear out or surface chipping is chiefly a matter of selecting a blade that's designed for the job all the saws were evaluated on how clean they cut the sauce cut the team was pleasantly surprised to see that three lesser priced saws rigid ryobi and skill cut as nice as the higher priced festool now these were the um these were the cleanest edge cutting saws with the least amount of tear out this this clean cut result was due probably to the fact that they all had the diablo blades along with operator skill set using the tools uh deflection every cut was measured and evaluated for blade deflection and like i said it was done at 45 and 90 degree cutting on the 90 degree cutting the festool milwaukee metabo and makita cut and ranked the best on the 45 degree cuts festool was the best followed by milwaukee then we looked at tracking now tracking was evaluated by following the lines to see how easy or hard it was to follow the line the festool metabo rigid ryobi and skill were the best at tracking now again we were surprised to see more economic brand ranked saws side by side with the higher priced chairman engineered sauce it's worth noting that when scoring the line of sight points were awarded based on the operator's ability to actually see the blade cutting through the poplar material points were not awarded based on the cut line deviation from the template cut line uh and basically look this is this ensured the operator error right so we wanted to minimize that as a primary scoring factor in our evaluation if the guy went off the cut who cared um all right look jigsaw accuracy winner festool festival shined in all four of the categories we looked at with a perfect score of four points it had dead on accuracy both 45 and 90 degree cuts and it's a good line of sight that strobe light system allows you to see the blade while cutting it's consistently produced clean cuts and its blade tracking was excellent minimal deflection of 45 and 90. uh milwaukee the milwaukee came away with second best score with a total of six points um it tied with the festival for near perfect 45 and 90 degree uh blade deflection and it uh it was excellent line of sight the milwaukee uh score was one point lower in the tracking and the clean cut categories and that's why it got a six not a four the um a three-way tie for third place high score went to metabo ridgid in ryobi all with seven points each so they did well as well let's talk about performance the test the performance test equates to power and power equates to cutting thicker harder to cut materials recognizing that a jigsaw requires the operator to make dozens if not hundreds of minuscule adjustments during cutting we decided to eliminate that human error you know when you're making a cut you back up or you change so to test power we built the jig to hold the saws and pull the saws through three-quarter plywood using a weighted pulley system and if you'd like to learn more about this system or this jig get an in-depth description of what we did go to the article because i don't have it's just too long to describe um the short version is that we designed a sled fixture that held the saw securely uh it was a weighted pulley system it allowed the saw to move at a consistent force and movement removing human variation and allowing us for the to get the fairest capability based test possible during the course of the testing the fixture performed with no negative issues each of the saws during this test were equipped with a diablo five inch six tooth per inch fast cutting wood blade designed specifically for fast rough cutting okay let's move on to the power and speed winner the winner of that was hilti these saws they came with different battery voltages and amp hour ratings and all that stuff so we took our results and we we leveled the playing field by normalizing the results based on total watt hours we do this a lot on our head to heads one hour formula basically equals load voltage times amp hours in this way the reader can see you guys can see the most effective combination of battery technology stamina motor power on a per watt hour basis so in this head to head the batteries were all 18 volts under load uh with the exception being cobalt which equates to about 24 volts the saw with the best score though was hilti it was closely followed second place by milwaukee and these two saws came very very close really close score um if this were a horse race hilti crossed the wire across the line by a nose under you know photo finish dewalt recorded the third best score during the speed power test we also noted a few of the saws had difficulty completing the test now the black and decker in the craftsman saws could not finish the test and we listed them as dnf did not finish during uh during that test with the saws the they couldn't hold the blade in the blade follower in the guide and the blade would become skewed basically so badly that the blade would bend and stop the saw now the porter cable had the same tendency but managed to muscle through and finish the test the metabo it actually the blade popped out of its uh guided groove roller and and rode along the side of the wheel um look while we did not know or explore reasons why this would happen or why these four saws had issues we can say that when a person operating a jigsaw is usually doing that the user will make immediate and miniscule adjustments to the path speed and force applied of the saw right so they're going to stop that from happening that way if you know the blade starts to wander or drift you know the user or the operator basically interfeins or whatever in this test once the condition started the sled made no adjustments and the saw blade combination proceeded on and it just compounded itself causing those four saws to fail um look uh i want to talk about best features and the winner of that was ridgid and comparing tool features with multiple brands is always difficult but the devil's in the details we looked at 10 features and we ranked them one through five with one being the best now the ridgid took first place with 17 points followed by festool at 18 makita and milwaukee tied for third place at 21 points dewalt followed um with 23 uh points and finished fourth the ridgid consistently showed up in this test and as a son not to be ignored and while not considered a higher end saw by most pros the ridgid has a feature set that many expect in a high-end saw and we've always called the ridgid tools the hidden gem in the tool game um let's break down some of these features a little bit uh the the handle and the trigger a good handle is important for user comfort and control um because it's it's important for grip right grip is is essential in controlling the movement of the tool during cutting now wider triggers offer more gripping options and control you can slide your hand a little bit more with a wider trigger whereas narrower jigsaw triggers can be clumsy and hard to grip while cutting a jigsaw's most important operational feature is probably its trigger right because you're controlling the speed as well the ryobi was hard to pull for about a quarter of an inch and it required kind of an over pull which made the tool jump tool activate so this made using the saw difficult and precision cutting operations festool we think festool went to sleep on the handle it's too smooth it's too narrow it's got like a rise that's awkward the team favored larger sized triggers like the festool hilti uh makita metabo in milwaukee we also like the dual trigger system which festool has where you can lock the saw on and use variable speed on the solder without pulling the trigger um the team was split with the trigger safety feature switch on the makita which requires you to push a button on the saw to activate the power to the saw and then you can use the trigger some people some of the guys felt it was unnecessary stepping you know just pull the trigger if you want to turn the tool on uh this soft start features makita has a soft start motor electronics motor and starts the motor slower slow level and stays low until the tool starts to cut the material and then ramps up in general a soft start basically is going to prevent the saw from suddenly jerking and if you start cutting with the blade in contact with the material or gets you kind of going on your line once that star engages the material obviously those rpms go up the ridgid has uh what's called a line start feature on the variable speed dial you can set that the feature again starts the blade at a lower rpm and when you engage the wood it allows you to start the cut the fest tool has an a symbol on their variable speed dial i assume that's for automatic and that starts at a lower rpm speed as well and speeds up when you engage material so all of these different options but basically the same result we look at variable speed the dial all of the jigsaws with the exception of ryobi have a variable speed trigger the dewalt hilti festool makita ridgid and ryobi were the only saws with variable speed dials and the dial is just going to allow you to set the upper limits of the motor speed and hence the number of blade strokes per minute we took a look at blade selective blade orbit and this mechanism basically moves the blade forward slightly during the upstroke cut resulting in a more aggressive cutting action if the then if the blade was simply just reciprocating straight up and down the mechanism also moves the blade back slightly as well so it clears material clears the kerf during the return downstroke and that's going to save wear and tear on your blade teeth now on these selective switches most have a four orbit setting zero is no orbit no orbital one is for cutting metal and plastics uh two is for fine and curved cutting and three would be your maximum orbit for a faster more aggressive rougher cut all of the saws with the exception of black and decker have selective blade orbits now the blade guide system this is pretty interesting most of the saws use a grooved wheel blade guide system it's not truly a guide it's just a wheel with a little groove in it it keeps that blade in alignment the fest tool has what i would call a true blade guide and um it has a smooth wheel and with a v shaped metal guide that actually contacts and stabilizes the back side of the blade and can be adjusted and it keeps that blade from deflecting during the cut we're talking precision here all of the jigsaws feature a has two tool-free blade chain systems which allow you to safely and easily change out the blades thanks to a spring-loaded lever indoor clamp but each of them are different and some are easier to work than others they were they were all pretty much easy to use for the most part but three stood out three saws stood out the fest tools fast fix awesome the makita has a terrific mechanism with a spring-loaded lever uh and then there's the bosch the bosch has what they call a one-touch blade chain system really nice operates beautifully um all of this can save you from burning your fingers or trying to pull out a hot blade from a clamp you know from a prolonged cutting session or something like that the dewalt kind of had a weird situation going when you when you cut the lever can rattle especially when you back the blade up in a cut to adjust the release lever rattles and this means that when the blade is pushed backwards like making a complicated cutter or a relief cut it starts to move that clamp and pushes on the blade clamp release lever and it makes a really alarming noise and sometimes it actually releases the blade which is annoying so that's kind of a thing that dewalt probably should look at when that blade is pushed back it does that um talk about uh the shoe plates the adjusting shoe plates um look you adjust the shoe plate to make a bevel or a scribe cut and while all these saws have tilting face plates available only the dewalt cobalt rigid ryobi milwaukee and skill allow tool-less changes the rest of the saws required an allen wrench to adjust the base the best adjustment for the toolless lever was the dewalt milwaukee and the skill these saws they have a uh there's a lever that you use it's just easy to manipulate and you can tilt the blade it releases nicely it's adjusted nicely and it locks easily and quickly now the festool actually when you buy it comes in a fixed base and if you want to bevel the saw you need to purchase an additional accessory kit this kit it's an adjustable base and it's controlled by a knob and basically because it didn't come with a beveling uh base we we lowered the score and gave it a three the beveling base itself is certainly cool it's certainly unique uh it is a um it's split in the middle kind of and it bevels like a butterfly with a knob and it's like split right down the middle and while this is fine for bevel cutting in the middle of a work piece one thing that we noticed with this is that when back beveling near the edge of the work piece it um it frequently can be a little awkward you can hit the work piece with it so just be aware of that uh we looked at dust collection dust blowers and jigsaw blowers don't typically impress us much most of these saws require you still require you to blow that dust away but not all that doesn't mean that all the blowers were equal the milwaukee cobalt metabo skill rigid and um rigid have selective blower switches giving you the option to turn the blower on or off the bosch hilti craftsman black decker metabo hpt porter cable have always on blowers now all the saws feature a dust blower that uses kind of air channeled from the motor of the fan to blow that dust at the front of the blade um the blowers did just an okay job there was nothing that really blew us away no pun intended um all of the all but the black and decker porter cable craftsman and metabo have led lighting the makita and rigid are the only tool tools that allow you to activate the led without actually engaging the blade but the best led light went to the milwaukee has a bright full halo circle that surrounds the whole blade with no shadow lines festool was similar in brightness brightness but did not throw out the same size halo the festool had a really large halo not as bright but it was full of shadows due to its guard system um let's talk about lock-on so uh as far as lock-on systems the festool makita ridgid and ryobi have the ability to lock the trigger in in on an on position makita rigid ryobi are set for right-handed users with a lock on button positioned for use basically by your right thumb the fest tool has an ambidextrous slide switch both sides of the saw position low by the saw head which we liked and is a lot easier for lefties we went onto ergonomics so the ergonomics winner was hilti and milwaukee now in layman's terms ergonomics pretty much refers to the interface between the user and the tool how does it feel when you're using it right do you want to use it again is it comfortable for the ergonomic section we consider the following factors ranking them one through five one being the best we looked at grip trigger adjustments of the switches relating to left and right hand users and basically hilti and milwaukee had a tie for the best ergonomic score bosch metabo and dewalt came in second place second place scores in ergonomics followed by makita and skill the fest tool has a trigger safety on the left side of the tool making it difficult for left-handed users to actuate and that's something we notice we have a lefty on the team the ridgid makita rigid ryobi have trigger locks on the left side of the tool again making it difficult for the left-handed users we moved on to vibration and the winner of the vibration or the least amount of vibration was makita regardless of how fast the jigsaw cuts the less vibration it produces the better all jigsaws employ some sort of counter balance system to reduce that up and down vibration of the plunger some work better than others using an uh acceler see if i say this right accelerometer sensors we captured the average and peak vibration readings for each saw when it was on the performance sled the the saws with the least vibration were makita festool and skill so um let me see let's talk about dust collection dust collection we did not test for dust collection of best dust collection because now we all agreed that we don't use dust collection with a jigsaw some folks do we don't during our discussion we discussed that we usually use a jigsaw for scribing finishing fitting and and finishing cuts from a table saw or a miter saw or something or to cut openings all the saws are critical uh cuts are critical and dragging a hose behind it can mess up that cut and it just doesn't take too long the hilti comes with an integrated dust channel festool has a dust shoe that inserts in the base behind the blade uh the milwaukee and ridgid come with dust ports that insert into the base plate and they collected from behind the blade guide and many of the other saws like bosch makita and metabo can be connected with dust collection but do not come standard with dust ports so we didn't we didn't have enough things to test on that we moved on to price at the time of publication of this video and article we looked at bear two to bear tool pricing and we chose bear tools because jigsaws are typically a secondary tool in your tool arsenal the best price top handle jigsaw was the black decker at 49 second price was porter cable at 55 followed by craftsman at 117 obviously the lower tier tools the highest price on this testing was the festool carvex sells for 349 is a bear tool the carvex versions whether corded or cordless with or without a battery all come in a sustainer the toolbox buzz crew chose to test a huge range of jigsaws from diy all the way up to pro grade so because of this we did not include pricing in our final scoring and ranking now that leads us to the best cordless jigsaw winner the competition for the best jigsaw went to festool and makita both with 19 points the fest tool came in tops both in accuracy and feature categories and second place in vibration it's a superbly cutting saw and super precise we criticized or i should say critique to the festival because of a user they need to buy an accessory kit if they want to bevel the saw kind of a bummer now makita scored tops in vibration category second and features third in ergonomics the toolbox buzz crew found the makita to have really good power they liked the soft start feature of it and they really appreciated the low vibration of this saw really nice cutting it has a super compact footprint it's truly a nice cutting saw now similar to the festool saw we critique the makita saw for its lack of tool-less beveling the user requires a tool an allen wrench to bevel the saw base no bueno now makita scored in the very middle as well for accuracy and precision whereas festool topped that one milwaukee came in third place with 20 points followed by hilti at 24 points and ridgid at 26 and dewalt right on the tail of 28. milwaukee had a a solid showing they came in first place uh tie with hilti in ergonomics they carried that category the milwaukee scored second in power and third place in features the crew all said that they enjoyed the power of the tsar it's a nice cutting star requiring minimal effort to operate the hilti uh scored tops in the power category and tied for milwaukee in the first place for ergonomics the entire team commented about how comfortable the hilti saw was to use it's just a really nice saw um it has a nice feeling but it was hard to see the cut line through the dust chute a dust hood so that was one thing we noted now ridgid scored second place in features and fourth in vibration it scored in the middle of the pack in all the other categories which allowed it to secure its close win over the dewalt all right if we move on from that we want to talk about best value the best value saw is the milwaukee jigsaw the milwaukee saw came in third overall in this test and priced mid-pack so it's right around 168 dollars as a bare tool it is a solid performing jigsaw it offers good price and it just makes it the best value sar out of the pack so guys to conclude our all pro contractor team put some serious time and effort into this head-to-head evaluation and we did that to bring you the most comprehensive information that we could these tests take a lot of time effort and ultimately limited in scope is we're not a professional tool testing company we cannot do long-term testing that would shed light on durability we don't have the time to do that with 15 saws and we cannot possibly test every application that you might use these saws for we get lots of comments about these head-to-head tests on how we come up with our final rankings some people like it some people disagree here's the good news we've openly shared all of our data for you in our tests in our charts so that you can rank the tools however you want you don't care about an item we rank you don't like price or or vibration or whatever no problem simply remove what you don't like remove it from the matrix re-rank hopefully you'll find that this head-to-head useful when comparing jigsaws we're also going to work on a barrel grip jig so i head to head next also guys please check out our other head-to-head comparisons we've got dozens of them and if you like this review give us a thumbs up subscribe and hit that notification bell right there also please follow concord carpenter and toolbox buzz on instagram we'll see you next time take care you

Channel: A Concord Carpenter / ToolBoxBuzz

Views: 40,575

Rating: 4.9380803 out of 5

Keywords: diy, how to, step by step, tools, reviews, carpentry, remodel, construction, jig saw, jigsaw, tool test, comparison, head to head, black and decker, dewalt, porter cable, craftsman, bosch, metabo, metabo hpt, makita, Milwaukee, Hilti, Skil, Festool, Kobalt, best jigsaw, cordless

Id: 4Dahr-4S-FE

Length: 25min 43sec (1543 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 05 2021