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Product Ranking

The Ryobi BTS10S Portable Table Saw (10" Blade) is 14th of 46 in the Portable Table Saws analysis standings. It is 54th of 245 in the Table Saws category. It is the seventh ranked product among 46 in the Ryobi brand.

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Locate more information on Ryobi products here. Parts, manuals, and other information can be found at www.ryobitools.com, the brand's site.

grade B
WHAT'S THIS?

Ranked #7 Portable Table Saw => Very Good
Consumer Reports, Volume 72, 2007-06

Consumer Reports testers ranked this as the 7th best portable table saw, which puts it in the "very good" range. The rip precision is excellent, the accuracy and speed are very good, and the ease of use and edge finish are good. The saw does not come with extensions or a cut-line indicator. Unfortunately the testers found that the miter fence can pop out of place.

This portable saw sells for about $89 at Home Depot, depending on what kind of sale you can get it on. While it didn't originally come with a stand, it does now and the stand is a vast improvement over trying to find something to put it on, especially since it has some vibration and makes a great deal of noise (earplugs might be in order with this one). I've since added a stand to mine and I tried to make as well as purchase dust collection bags. While a standard Craftsman low-end saw bag does catch the dust that falls, don't expect it to do anything about all the open ports around the base.
I've had this saw for about five years now and have cut a lot of wood on it. The rip blade that comes with the saw isn't very good and will dull quickly, especially if you're going to be cutting oak. After splintering the ends of some flooring I put a finer toothed Skil blade on it. That added about another $25 to the cost but was well worth it. So far I've probably done about 1,000 square feet of flooring (some engineered, some solid, some laminates). Fortunately baseboards and quarter round cover all the ends I did initially.
The blade tilts from vertical to 45 and is accurate enough that I haven't had any gap problems installing base boards, molding, and even some crown molding. That being said, the fence and miter gage are downright horrible. I've added some oak to the miter to beef it up a little (it's so narrow that longer pieces of wood would tilt) and the fence received some HDPE (plastic cutting board) to slick it up some and add some heft. Yes, the additional thickness of the fence throws off the gauge, but it was so inaccurate so as to be useless anyway. Even after adjustment the fence was off because the scale that Ryobi threw down on this saw doesn't line up with any of my squares.
The fence will lock down it you tighten it enough, but even at max torque I could whack it around with the palm of my hand. Not the most accurate thing in the world so keep your square handy. As for the miter gauge, the scale isn't true so keep your square around for that too (and check it frequently). I went to Home Depot the other day and was amazed to see that Ryobi had cheapened the junk miter gauge even further by making it all out of plastic (before it was chromed steel for the slide and some kind of pot metal for the T, but at least it was all metal).
Lastly, the motor keeps good speed overall, but will bog down a bit when cutting 2" thick boards. Doesn't trip out any standard residential outlets that I've plugged it into either. Overall this saw is great for hauling around and doing small projects that don't require any large cuts (the rip is an underwhelming 9 1/2") or fine accuracy. It's never broken or overheated on me.