Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This is a great saw. It cuts precisely with minimal deflection. The bevel system is a joy to use and spot on. The dado feature is really handy. ( I thought the dado feature was kind of a novelty and I'd never use it, but it has been a great help more than once) The saw is light, which is nice. I've been using the Kapex for 6 months, and I've been happy with it in general and downright giddy with excitement at other times when I use certain features. Now that that's behind us...don't get me wrong, I love Festool and own 6 other Festool tools, and I really like this one, but there are MULTIPLE design and convenience issues that the tool designers seem to have missed. Here's a list, hopefully someone at Festool will see this and fix these issues on the next incarnation 1. The on board storage for the miter finder tool is in the way of the saw table rotation. You have to keep sliding it out of the way when you turn the saw beyond 40 degrees in both directions. Because of this I now keep the miter finder in the truck. (I rarely use it anyway unless we're doing big crown or built-ups) 2. The trigger and head locking mechanism is annoying at first, but I have mostly gotten used to it. It does still bother me when I'm trying to bring the blade down with the power off though. I accept this annoyance as a safety feature I guess, but I managed to keep all my fingers with my old saw for the past 20 years...maybe it will save a greenhorn somewhere. 3. The rail forward design is neat-o and all, until you try to bevel beyond 30 degrees! Then the rails hit the fence. No big deal- slide the fence out of the way, right? Nope! It's held in place by a seemingly pointless retainer screw with a hex drive. No big deal- remove the retainer screw with the on-board allen wrench, right? Nope Again! The onboard allen wrench doesn't fit the retainer screw. Sheesh...off to the bottom of the toolbox to search for the right size. The fence extensions then need to be TOTALLY REMOVED in order to reach maximum bevel. You would think the geniuses who came up with the ts55 would have figured out a way around this like a different fence design or rail placement. 4. Speaking of hex keys, that's how you adjust the laser, with a little tiny hex key. Now, the hex key you use to change the blade has a neat little hidey hole on the back of the saw, but the key for adjusting the laser does not. In fact, when you open the box the little tiny hex key is just jammed into the packaging foam like a dart, as if it were an afterthought. I taped mine to the saw body, but of course it fell off and is now MIA. Why couldn't they have made a holder for that hex key too? Or maybe some other more convenient way of adjusting the laser? I know you're supposed to adjust the laser to perfect then never adjust it again, and I did adjust it to perfect, but one side doesn't seem as bright as the other. I don't know for sure if there is an adjustment for that, but until I find the right size allen wrench, I guess I'll never know. (In truth, I thought lasers on saws were for gimmicks kiddies that didn't know better til I used this saw...The lasers, once adjusted, are amazingly accurate and a great help with bevel cuts in larger pieces and built-ups.) 5. The rubber feet that come attached to the saw are fine if you are putting the saw directly on the floor, and perfect for setting the saw on a Festool MFT (multi-function table) I don't lug around my heavy MFT though, I use a universal miter saw stand. The little rubber feet were in the way of the mounting mechanism for my stand and had to be removed. I thought this would be no big deal, since they were put on with hex head bolts too. Unfortunately, they were in so tight that I ended up shredding the rubber feet! This was not due to carelessness on my part...believe me, I tried to remove the rubber feet for 2 hours. That's 30 minutes per little rubber foot. I want that time back....and I sure hope I never actually need the feet, `cause they are in pieces. 6. The sacrificial plastic insert in the table warps and buckles with temperature changes. It hasn't actually interfered with the accuracy of any cuts-yet- but that wasn't something I expected from Festool. Also, the gap in the insert is large and the area under the insert doesn't have an opening on the bottom. The result is lots of little tiny pieces of wood getting stuck in the space under the plate and occasionally shooting out like a miniature wooden missile! 7. I really miss the little engraved inch markings on my bosch from 1992. No, they were not dead on accurate, and would vary from blade to blade, but they were fast and handy for quick little repeated cuts where accuracy was not an issue. 8. When using the dado feature, you need to install a sacrificial fence for the dado to carry all the way through the piece at the same depth. Not a big deal I guess, but worth mentioning. 9. I have not been as thrilled with the dust extraction as others. I've been told that it's because I need a 36mm hose instead of a 27 mm hose. I have not gotten arround to dropping $100 on a damn vacuum hose yet to see if they're right. There were a few other design issues I've noticed along the way, but that's the list of glaring problems that have bothered me. I've read on some websites how some people have gotten around these shortcomings by building custom inserts and sacrificial fence attachments, but in my opinion when you spend $1300 for a saw, you shouldn't have to take a day modifying it to make it right. My hope is that Festool will make these problems go away by the next time I buy a slider. If it were not for these issues, this would be the best saw ever by a mile. As it stands, it is still a great saw with some shortcomings that take some getting used to or custom modifying.