on today's tools day we're going to talk about
compact routers they go by a couple names pollen routers trim routers laminate routers and
it may not seem like it but there are different classes of them different use cases for them
now there's two things i feel like i always have to say at the beginning of these videos
number one this is sponsored by me and me alone i'm a thousand dollars into small routers here
so that we can keep this opinion unbiased and uninfluenced by any company in addition these are
the routers i chose there's probably more brands and i'm sorry i didn't test your uh high-end
italian router you got in the early 90s but before you get your bloomers in a bunch these
are the ones i chose because i think that they're some of the most popular ones with that
are most readily accessible one thing to note as well is the milwaukee and the ryobi they
did not have corded compact routers available of course have a battery-powered makita because
i've already owned that one but a lot of these other routers do come with battery options they
would be just the same as you see in this test except for maybe a little bit less powerful
with the batteries before we get into this you need to think about what are you going to
use a trim router for is this your first router if that's the case you're going to want to think
about accessories like a plunge base or an edge guide some of them come with cheap edge guides and
a lot of brands have upgradable versions that you can get that are much more accurate and reliable
does it accept guide bushing then if you're planning on using a dedicated router for doing
edge profiles like do you want to just keep an eighth inch roundover bit in it then maybe you're
gonna want a cordless router i know i really enjoy my cordless router for that reason i just keep an
edge profile bit in it all the time when i need to break some edges i can just whip it out and
go gentlemen ladies are you on the go are you on a job site are you going to be using it in a spot
but you like to use corded because you maybe want the option for more power if you're going to do
the occasional groove or dado with your router so we're going to break these into different
categories we're going to talk about different features we obviously can't compare a cordless
milwaukee router to a corded dewalt router because they're just not going to carry the same
power however we can compare the accessories the adjustability the repeatability the accuracy so
we've devised a series of tests that we're going to do and i'm going to come up with some of my own
thoughts for which router i would buy in each of those scenarios i talked about so let's get into
the test we're going to start by checking the adjustability of a router which i think is the
most important part so for this first test we're testing a few things we're doing accuracy and
repeatability and the way we're going to do that is i've marked with my marking gauge i've marked
a line that is an eighth inch all the way around the board i'm going to change the bit set it to
that line an eighth we're going to make a pass holding it down here and then we're going to make
a pass holding it with our hand on top and our hand on the side what that's going to simulate
is any pressure if you're like kind of in a weird spot and you had to you know go against
the wall or anything it's going to test how well that depth adjustment holds up with just a
little bit of pressure on the top and you know a good router shouldn't move regardless how you
hold it or what pressure you put on it it should keep the exact same depth so then we'll use a
pair of calipers measure the depth we'll see if there's a difference this also gives an
opportunity to check out the led light and the on and off switch which we'll be able
to check out a bunch of times during these tests all right we finished that test ran it twice to
make sure that we were getting accurate results the short answer is everything here from the bosch
over to the dewalt was rock solid didn't move at all everything porter cable milwaukee
and ryobi moved porter cable the least porter cable it's like it feels solid but
it just moves just a little bit milwaukee was the most disappointing one because i had
high hopes for that it looks very nicely built comes with great accessories but it's got .04
of play in the mechanism and you can adjust it when it's closed which a router shouldn't do that
and then the ryobi we're not even going to let it continue the test because it can't hold the bit
the bit dropped over an eighth of an inch on one pass and continued to keep being all wonky and
it scared me uh so we're going to take them out of circulation plus this is the dumbest thing i've
ever seen to take the base off you got to undo the clamp so you got your clamp off then you press
down the macro adjustment then it hangs on the switch so you got to reach your other hand around
push the button in and catch the router before it falls on the ground absolute garbage it just isn't
worth even pursuing even though it's by far the cheapest on here although it doesn't come with the
batteries for the milwaukee fanboys i'm sorry man that thing is garbage but let's talk about some of
the other ones dewalt i knew i've used this one a bunch i knew that was going to be saw the thing is
just rock solid makita the worst out of the bunch as far as adjustment goes accuracy wise it was
dead on you know you got the same passes whether i was pushing down on the top or holding it from
the side ridgid did well although the adjustment on ridgid is pretty terrible when you go if you're
like have your hand down here and you're trying to do it you can see this rotates down and it's you
got to like rotate it back up also when this is loose it's like really wobbly and although it does
have a dial which is nice it's just not great but it got the job done bosch rock solid and i think
they designed it to be very very rock solid with this three-way switch it has a lock position which
is like hey i'm ready to go and cut something it has a i'm ready to adjust it position so that's
then you just do it with this dial the dial is rather stiff it could probably do with a little
grease but it's i think stiffness gives you you know reliability it makes it very very slow which
is what you want you know you can macro adjust it from this position and get it kind of close
and then you switch it to the adjust position and do this and then when you're ready
to go you lock it down if i had to pick my absolute favorite it was the dewalt for the
adjustability all of course all of these were accurate but as far as like mechanisms go the
twist on the dewalt the way that it works is you can go really fast and it moves pretty quickly
or you can just barely turn it and it moves slowly and so i love that macro micro feature without
having an extra button extra switch like the ridgid does or the porta cable or the milwaukee
and the ryobi we're going to talk about switches and lights and accessories at the end because
i feel like those are add-ons they wouldn't affect my buying decision a lot because you know
most important thing is power and accuracy right so we're going to move on to the use it and abuse
it test we're going to route a bunch of grooves we're going to do some round overs and basically
i'm going to do 15 minutes of continuous usage which with each router and then rate them based
on a bunch of different rating factors i have here and we're going to talk about those after the test
and i'll give you my final assessment at the end as far as you know whether you should get
battery or corded as well as which one i would recommend so let's move on to the use
and abuse it test and uh beat these guys up one of the things that's great about
doing these tools days and using tools side by side is you learn some things that
you didn't know you really liked about a tool and some things that you may have tolerated in
the past that really are just kind of dumb i've changed the order of these they are now ordered
in price so cheapest to most expensive let me just say some things about what you should look for in
any brand of router that i've sort of identified as the most important parts accessories when it's
locked together does it move i'm going to address the milwaukee here in one second to call it check
out these collets in the the type of collet is so indicative of which ones were good and which ones
were bad the er collets with the four sides those routers all performed better than the cheaper
routers and the ryobi's even though it looks like an er call it's like stamped sheet metal we
threw out the ryobi from the test because i wasn't willing to risk having a bit come loose and shoot
in my face so the fact that it couldn't hold a bit was a deal breaker for me as well as the switch
anything that has a switch like this is a bad idea because if you ever put like a finger up there
to brace it or you put a second hand on there to steady it it's going to turn off your router which
is super annoying accuracy type of call it and then you want to think about the power now one of
the things that i really had a misconception about was the power of battery-operated routers both of
these battery-powered routers actually were much much stronger than i thought to the point that it
made me do a bunch of googling and figure out that they actually aren't really much less power in
fact in the case of makita if you use the five amp hour batteries they say it's more powerful
than their corded version if you're gonna get a router and you don't use a compact router
as your main router the one you use all the time i'd get battery powered and all of these do come
in battery powered i believe i didn't see a porter cable but that doesn't matter that one's terrible
anyways if it's your main router you use all time you've got a plunger base for it and you're you
know routing all your grooves and dados with it then maybe you want to get corded so you don't
have to worry about running out of battery power but other than that i mean they're great these
are the same batteries we started the test with and we did about 15 minutes of usage for each
route and that's like actual routing time not we played with it for 15 minutes like we spent
a ton of time routing grooves and flush trimming and we did everything like harder faster and like
deeper than we would normally like we were doing 3 8 inch grooves and normally i'd probably only
do maybe a quarter inch at most and you know we were flush trimming with the whole bit buried in
the wood which i would never do so it was a great test we really used and abused these so let's talk
about the milwaukee i said that was trash earlier i take that back although with some caveats i
looked it up and there are a bunch of reviews of people saying they have that same problem and it
is a bad design the way that this adjustment knob is however you can crank down on this nut here
with an allen key and then you can lock it but it makes it pretty tough to adjust however it does
fix the problem but because i know that i would never fully trust it it would always worry me to
use it especially on like delicate cuts that you had to get right you know maybe you're real
far down on a project and you're routing out a groove for a door a drawer or something and
you don't want to mess up your whole project it would make me worried however if you're already
on the milwaukee platform this is a great option everything else about it was fantastic it comes
with some great accessories like a dust guard i'm sorry dust collection as well as this extra large
base plate that is got a step in it that will accept the bosch template guide bushings which are
great tools for inlay or tracing patterns let's go through maybe a just a quick overview of each one
and then i'll give you my final recommendation of what i would get porter cable it's like it wants
to be a good router but it's got the good you know twist adjustment but it failed the accuracy test
and i kind of verified that that was the case and it wasn't something i did and it's true it moves i
couldn't figure out why but everything else about it just feels cheap it's like molded plastic and
you can just feel that everything is just kind of garbage on it especially you know it's got one of
those cheap collets with just one split down the end of it so it's just not a good option because
it doesn't have any benefits to it above anything else the ridgid is another one it feels like
playskool is my first router like everything's kind of chintzy all the parts you know move
they're really hard to adjust this is so annoying when you go to lock this down and it presses down
and you gotta like flip it back up and lock it down the macro adjust on it's kind of real cheap
and tough to really mess around with too much so i was not impressed with that one and it's got
that switch i hate then the makita like i said makita fanboy here the adjustment on it it just
makes it a non-starter for me i've had this router a long time and i didn't know how bad it was until
i got to compare it to other things it'd be super powerful but what the only thing i would use this
for because i do love the freedom of a battery is i just throw a round over bit leave it set perfect
and just always you know use it just for doing eighth inch roundovers my favorite routers were
these two the bosch colt and the dewalt now as far as pricing goes the bosch is a lot cheaper and
not a bad bet it's actually i'd say the greatest value in here it's also what i would consider
maybe the second best in here but not it's not second best by a lot like it's really good it's
very hefty noticeably more powerful than anything else except the dewalt which i'd say they're
about the same they're both 1.25 horsepower has a phenomenal collet the bits are very easy to change
one cool thing that also has a little bit of an annoying factor to it is the lights are always on
i love that when you're trying to set up cuts and get your bit right in the right place it is cool
when it is lit underneath and not just when it's running the only a slightly annoying thing is when
you go to change a bit they sort of shine in your eyes and they're very very bright which is great
for when you're working but maybe not the best when you're you're changing a bit the adjustment
on it is the only thing that is not as good as the dewalt it is good but it's kind of it's small it's
only in one place you got to kind of like reach around and it's very stiff which i imagine is very
good for accuracy but not great when you're like trying to set up a cut and and move it around but
other than that phenomenal i don't personally use variable speed on my compact routers very often
so i didn't really play around much with those the point of variable speed is when you have a you
know really wide router bit you slow it down but i would never use a really wide router bit in a
compact router i would go with a bigger router because it's just it's not safe it's going to burn
out your motor and you know anything over a half inch wide i wouldn't use it a compact router now
my favorite also the most expensive is the dewalt it's got really bright lights on it the bits are
very easy to change i love the adjustment it was my favorite one you can sort of macro adjust it
and turn it really fast or really micro adjust you can just turn it just a little bit one of the
coolest things about it is this base i love to put my fingers on the side here the bosch has two
great finger holes but the rest of them are just round and you're doing something like butterfly
keys it makes a huge difference in the ability to really fine tune that thing and be able to
move it around very slightly it's also great when you're working on edges because you can
put your fingers right here and stabilize it but one of the coolest things about it it's the
only router in all of these that you can flip the base 180 degrees which is amazing
because normally i guess i would just take the screws out and move this base around
depending on what side of a board i was trying to work on but you don't have to with the dewalt
and that i think is really really cool all in all the ridgid the porter cable the ryobi those are
non-starters for me makita it was solid once it was locked down but that adjustment knob just it
makes it i won't buy another one the milwaukee great battery powered option it does have
the potential to get loose but you know it seems like a lot of people do really love
it based on the reviews i read and that thing that happened to me doesn't happen all the
time but when it comes to which one i would choose if you are on a budget you're trying to save
money get the bosch cult if you want to just get the best out there the dewalt phenomenal choice
especially because these are the two with the most accessories one of the problems with the milwaukee
you can only buy the plunge base as a kit that's the only one i found it didn't have a lot of other
accessories but bosch and dewalt their accessories abound and they are great i i used to have the
bosch colt the model before this one and i had all you know the really nice edge guide with the
fine micro adjust it has a wonderful plunge base and i've used the dewalt before same thing it's
got great accessories they're very high quality and i really can recommend it like i said guys
i paid for all these routers there is no outside influence none of this is sponsored and this is my
opinion in my opinion alone if you disagree with me i'd love to hear about it down in the comments
and it would really help out the channel allow me to do a lot more of these videos if you head over
to the cat's moses store and check out all the great tools we have over there guys thanks for
watching stay safe in the shop have a wonderful you
