Bosch 5412 Miter Saw only $599.00

My boss picked up one of these for us four months ago, mainly for finish/trim work. Out of the box, it seemed like a great saw, fully loaded with features. It’s a very intelligently designed saw. However, as time went on, we found more and more problems with it, and some of the guys have chosen to go back to the old DeWalt rather then to deal with it.

First, the good: Dual bevel is extremely handy… all top-level saws should have this feature. Another feature I really liked were all the upfront controls, so there’s no leaning over the table to adjust the bevel. It makes working with the saw and adjusting much quicker. It also gives you quite a lot of table width for working on.

The bad: During the first month, we quickly grew tired of the fact that the saw seemed very stiff when adjusting the bevel. I read through the manual and even tried adjusting the nut in the back, but nothing worked. It’s just a very stiff saw to work with. Not a big deal when jumping from 0 to 45 degrees, but when you try to adjust it 1 degree, the saw has a tendency to stick, then jump a few degrees when more pressure is applied.

The second month, we started noticing inaccuracies in the cuts… cuts weren’t square when they were suppose to be. Sometimes the cut was perfect, and other times the cut was out of line, suggesting there was some play between the saw guide and the blade. Also, the laser tracking began a ‘delay’ between when the saw was started and when the laser would turn on. It used to turn on with the saw, but it began turning on after the saw was running for 2-3 seconds.

The third month, the inaccurate cuts became more frequent and the laser tracking delay was up to 5-7 seconds. In addition, the belt was apparently loosening because when starting the saw you can here a bit of a ‘chirp’ and cutting through thick wood on a bevel sometimes cause the blade to stop spinning, which included a very loud ’screeching’ noise.

As of today, the laser tracking only goes on intermittently, often not at all. There is also quite a bit of side-to-side play in the slide, which the manual doesn’t seem to explain how to fix. This has caused inaccurate bevel cuts. Aside from the dual bevel feature, it’s now on par with the five year old DeWalt saw we have, which has now quickly becoming our main saw again. The Bosch saw just doesn’t seem to be able to keep up with extended and frequent use.

Bosch has made a saw with a lot of intelligent and useful features. If they can find a way to bring up the overall quality, this would definitely be an outstanding product. Until then, this is not something you should use in a professional environment.