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These table saws are sure to elevate your workshop and cut your work time in half. Woodworking Tools
Whether you’re woodworking as a profession or a DIY’er, it’s important you have well made and reliable tools. That doesn’t mean you need to spend a ridiculous amount of money in order to get that reliability though. If you need an accurate cut, your best bet will be to go with the table saw. Powerful and reliable, the table saw is the perfect addition to anyone’s workshop.
Here at the Good Housekeeping Institute’s Home Improvement & Outdoor Lab, we test all tools ranging from cordless drills and leaf vacuums to pressure washers. With our Home Renovation Awards, we’ve tested hundreds of tools meant for homeowners and professionals. We also worked with our friends over at Popular Mechanics, who conducted their own hands-on testing with table saws. Below, you'll find which table saw is best for you and any project you are thinking about.
Keep reading to discover what to know when shopping for a table saw, including important terminology and the different types of table saw variations.
DeWalt’s contractor table saw comes with a 10-inch blade that holds an incredible 32 ½” rip capacity. Our friends over at Popular Mechanics enjoyed the telescoping fence rails, which not only retract for easy portability, but make it easier to make quick fence adjustments when cutting. While it is a little heavy, coming in around 90 pounds, it is perfect for having on the jobsite as it comes with a rolling stand, allowing you to easily wheel it to wherever you need.
Power it by plugging it into a standard wall socket, so no having to worry about batteries with this one. For any new power tool owners, DeWalt provides this product with a three-year limited warranty and one year of free service, so any initial issues you have can be handled; and if anything were to go wrong in the future, DeWalt will fix it. Safety features include a blade guard assembly, a riving knife (which helps to prevent any wood kicking back into your face) and a push stick (to help push the wood so your hands don’t need to go near the blade).
Skilsaw has been designing circular and table saws for professionals for decades. With their expertise, they came out with the brand Skil, which our team at Good Housekeeping considers to be a good option for DIYers. This affordable table saw from Skil has rack-and-pinion fence rails, making it easier for the fence to stay parallel to the saw for continuous cuts. Though it can be folded up with its stand, you would need to carry its full weight of 51 pounds. With a 10-inch blade and a bevel capacity of 45 degrees, you can make excellent cuts to any piece of wood. The rip capacity is slightly smaller than others in the list, around 25.5-inches but that is still a good cut to make.
This table saw comes with a five-year limited warranty, which is the most among all the picks here. You can plug this guy into any household typical outlet to get it to work properly. It has a dust-port elbow, so you can plug a vacuum in and get any sawdust off the machine, and in case of a power outage while you are working with the saw, it has an anti-restart switch so you won’t have to worry about the table saw coming on once the power comes back on. We may not have gotten to test this one, but 95% of consumers who have used this have given it 4 stars and up. Still, some users were unhappy with the amount of plastic that was a part of this tool, as the parts would sometimes warp.
This contractor table saw has a 15-amp motor that runs a 10-inch blade at 5000 RPM. It comes with its own foldable rolling stand for moving around your work area. This table saw comes with a blade brake, meaning instead of letting the saw spin an extra 10 or so seconds to come to a stop, the brake can stop it instantly, just like a car brake. With this, you will also get a miter gauge to help create any angled cuts you might need and accessory storage for all the tools and pieces that come with the table saw to help with ease of transport. This table saw can work with any regular household plug. The few complaints from customers that have used this product have to do with the plastic lever that is used to adjust the saw angle. It would sometimes become stripped because of the material, and you would have to use a wrench to adjust the angle.
Dan DiClerico, our Director of the Home Improvement & Outdoor Lab, says Ryobi products are always a top choice for any DIYer. While we weren’t able to get hands on with this product, we have high confidence in all Ryobi tools. They come with high-quality safety features to protect yourself and other people who may be around the area of the table saw.
Hybrid table saws are for those who want a little bit more punch to their power tool capabilities without completely breaking the bank. Combining features from different levels of table saws is what makes a hybrid table saw stand out. This one from Shop Fox is the size of a contractor saw with some of the capabilities of a full cabinet saw. The maximum rip capacity is 30 inches with the fence on the right side. With a kickstand-operated base, this table saw is also portable. Lock the wheels in with a single press, and then unlock by just pushing the other way. With a single phase 2 HP motor spinning a 10-inch blade, you can plug this table saw into any typical household socket.
Unlike other portable table saws, Shop Fox comes with an enclosed cabinet bottom, as well as a 4-inch dustport at the bottom. It may not sound impressive, but imagine how much sawdust you will go through cutting multiple boards of wood. By having your motor and moving parts enclosed, you are much less likely to get any sawdust into the motor, thus increasing the lifespan of said motor. Connect a dust vacuum to the 4-inch port, and you’ll be able to clean the sawdust easily as you cut. On top of that, because it is an enclosed cabinet, the trunnions are mounted directly to it. Trunnions connect to the arbor, which connects to the saw blade. Since everything is then connected to the cabinet, the cabinet is able to absorb vibration from the saw/motor, allowing for easier and smoother cuts.
The team at Popular Mechanics loved this table saw, but did mention how people were purchasing a higher-quality replacement fence, as the quality of the one that came with the table saw was not up to par with the quality of the rest of the tool.
The largest, most expensive and most powerful, cabinet saws are considered the cream of the crop of table saws and they're meant for those who are very serious about woodworking, whether professionally or at your own workshop. This one from SawStop is very large, about 7 feet wide and a little less than 3 feet deep, so you'll need enough space to accommodate it. But with bigger size comes extra cutting benefits: a 52-inch rip capacity and a 52-inch fence. The motor is 3 HP, 230V single phase motor, which means it’ll need a strong enough receptacle to power it. (Make sure you know what your receptacles are rated for before plugging in this tool.) Our team over at Popular Mechanics consider this table saw as the most reliable option for professionals or hardcore DIYers.
If you’re worried about how much sawdust you may produce with a table saw, SawStop has a blade guard that connects directly to a vacuum, so it can immediately suck up any dust as you cut wood. It does come with wheels that you can lock and unlock, allowing you to move the cabinet table saw if necessary, but we wouldn’t recommend thinking of it as a portable table saw.
Though untested, SawStop claims to have a patented safety system: If the blade were to come into contact with skin, the blade will stop instantly, preventing any serious cut that could potentially happen. Another cool feature is its onboard computer, which makes sure all the moving parts are running properly. This is important since the SawStop safety system relies completely on this computer; it will actually prevent the motor from turning on if the computer notices anything wrong.
This benchtop table saw is perfect for anyone with a small shop or working on site. Easily transportable, the table saw can be folded up and carried in one hand. It doesn’t plug into a wall, but uses rechargeable batteries instead. The brushless motor helps to provide longevity to the table saw, since it allows it to handle continuous work better than a saw with a brushed motor. The ripping capacity for this table saw is 25 inches, which is the maximum distance between the blade and the fence. The fence is what you line the wood up against while you cut, which is why a table saw can make such accurate and straight cuts.
Woodworkers testing this Bosch say it's great for beginners, one even saying “I am a new homeowner/DIYer, so power saws can be intimidating but this one was not.” The biggest downside to this tool is that one of our consumer testers was disappointed by the safety features. While he was able to cut just fine, he mentioned that "the guard and kickback brace are flimsy."
Our experts in the Good Housekeeping Institute's Home Improvement & Outdoor Lab pore over consumer reviews and online sentiment to see which are the most popular models and which are the ones customers love the most. We utilize our brand knowledge as well to determine which tools are most likely to work the best. We have tested one table saw within our Lab, and worked with our teammates over at Popular Mechanics to gather additional information on the table saws they tested as well.
✔️ Type. There are several options to choose from based on the kinds of projects you do and how much space you have.
✔️ Safety features. Safety should always be a top priority so it's a good idea to pick a model with these features.
✔️ Rip capacity: This represents the largest distance between the blade and the fence. There's no "correct" range, it's more dependent upon the types of projects you are working on. The bigger the capacity, the bigger cuts you can make. It can be adjusted to different distances from the blade to set the size of the final cut. It is important to know the minimum so you know just exactly the sizes you can cut for your project. Make sure to do your research to know the minimum and maximum.
Anyone attempting to use a table saw should know the basic blades and when to use each one. Typically, most table saws come with a rip blade, and any extra blades commonly need to be purchased separately. Before buying any of the below, always make sure your table saw can handle the size of the blade.
Alec Scherma is the test engineer at the Good Housekeeping Institute, testing products in both the home renovation and electronics space for the past couple years. With a degree in mechanical engineering, he has been working and using different power tools for the majority of his adult life.
Dan DiClerico is the director of the Home Improvement & Outdoor Lab at the Good Housekeeping Institute. With more than 20 years of experience testing different home products and power tools, as well as being a capable DIY'er himself, Dan has exorbitant knowledge with most tools and tool brands.
Alec Scherma (he/him) is the Good Housekeeping Institute’s test engineer, where he helps to create and implement new product testing methodology across home, cooking and cleaning appliances, wellness, tech products and more. He graduated from Drexel University’s College of Engineering with a B.A. in mechanical engineering.
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