Archived from the Tools In Action forum (Dewalt). This thread is read-only.
So I bought this quite some time ago now and thought I’d share my thoughts on its use so far.
First impressions were really good, I believe it works as intended and the remote with tool pairing works great also.
Pros
– Runtime with a 9ah or 12ah capacity battery is pretty good. If you begin with three fully charged batteries and two chargers you can literally run this tool non stop.
– It is light when it isn’t full of dust.
– Portability is good
– From memory it wasn’t expensive
– Auto filter cleaning works very well
– It is relatively quiet
This is where dewalt got it all wrong in my opinion.
Cons
– No wheels
– The hose marks everything in black, walls, floors etc
– Supplied hose length is useless, I had to buy the extra length hose
– fleece bags destroy the performance of the tool
– Alarm can’t be disabled and the hose diameter selector switch has never made a difference for me
– Auto filter cleaning should be optional
– Metal latches should be on the upper half of the unit, when emptying the bin into a garbage bag they hook onto the bag and tear it open nearly all of the time.
With all this in mind, it makes me wonder if dewalt actually give their tools out to real trades, in real work environments to test out during development, prior to release?
I used this attached to my 9″ grinder to grind approx 25sqm of concrete after removing tiles prior to pouring self levelling. With the fleece bags, it couldn’t keep up with the dust (granted it is only rated for 5″ tools) and the alarm would not stop. I removed the fleece bags and it was like a different vacuum, the suction power increased enormously. I would guess that the dust clogs the fleece bag almost instantly. No more alarm and the tool kept up quite well with the dust as I ground. I was amazed how well the filter cleaning worked. Some photos below.
If you ever have issues with the audible alarm just remove the bags and it will solve your problem.
I just bought the metabo ASR 36-18 and started using it, I will post a review on it soon.
Size difference to the metabo
