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Hitachi’s saw certainly stands out from the crowd. It is huge, and I might even call it garish. Every passerby during our testing wanted to know about the saw, and it has some distinctive features to go along with its futuristic look. The most notable is the digital readout for the miter and bevel scales, which might point to the future of these tools. There were, however, some disappointing features. For instance, the stock blade cuts well, but there is more play in the slides than I would like (about 3⁄32 in.). Also, this was the only saw that arrived with fences out of square. Normally, that’s not a big problem to fix. But the fences on this saw are separate castings on each side, and there is no mention of how to adjust them in the manual. Finally, the Hitachi saw touted an ability to lock the slide rails and have only the head of the saw move in similar fashion to a radial-arm saw. In theory, this allows the saw to be placed closer to a wall and still cut to its full capacity. In practice, however, the casting is so large that this provides little advantage. The DeWalt takes up far less space, even when set away from a wall.
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