Ah, yes. The ubiquitous five inch orbital sander. Lots of folks own them, and almost all the sanders have cords. Sensing that handy people everywhere might want the same freedom from cords they’ve come to expect on most other power tools, Makita recently released their LXOB01 five inch, eight hole, cordless sander. I was recently working on an upstairs window restoration and found myself without a convenient power outlet and working overhead, two ideal conditions to give this new cordless sander a whirl.

Makita has flown in the face of sander convention and opted for push-button operation rather than a more traditional power switch. Ergonomically situated at the front upper edge of the tool, two buttons control all the sanding action. A start/speed button fires it up and then cycles through the tools three speeds. In case you’re curious, according to Makita: High speed equals 11,000 orbits per minute, medium is 9,500 and low is 7000. I tried to verify these numbers but kept losing count after about four or five orbits. As a result, we’re taking Makita’s spec’s on this. The tool starts at the highest speed. Each button press from there moves it to medium, then low and then back to high again. The second button is the stop button, which is useful if you don’t want to sand indefinitely.

One factor that may determine whether or not you’d want to task the Makita cordless sander with shop work specifically is dust collection. While it does have a dust collection port, it’s tiny diameter makes it really only suited to the dust collection bag it comes with. The Makita sander does a respectable job sucking dust through the eight hole sandpaper into the bag, but you’re still going to have quite a bit of dust escape. If dust collection is a high priority for you, then I’d recommend a corded sander with a port more suitable for a dust collector / vac. Of course once you hook up a sander to a dust collection system, there is not much point in going cordless since they haven’t quite invented a hose-less dust collector yet.
Overall, we found the Makita 18v Cordless Sander very comfortable to use. While the battery looks bulky, we found it didn’t feel bulky. Switching between gripping the top of the sander or grabbing the sander from the front worked well for just about any sanding angle we tried. If you’re working in a continuous production environment this likely is not a good fit. However, if you’re like most homeowners or contractors that have a sanding job to tend to here and there, the Makita 5″ Cordless Random Orbit Sander is a convenient, comfortable tool that gets the job done fast, effectively, and tangle-free. You can find the Makita LXOB01Z 18-Volt LXT Lithium-Ion Cordless 5-Inch Random Orbit Sander, Tool Only, No Batteryfor under $90 on Amazon.
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