This saw is unusually well made, sturdy, powerful, accurate. I am a retired building contractor and this is one of the best values I've seen.

Picked this up for 99 bucks (price fluctuates often so just throw it into your shopping cart and wait for that deal to come up). Bought an Irwin laser guide for about 20 bucks and I'm ready for my job. This one is made in China (not Japan) but my expectations are for the occasional homeowner use, not for contractor duty and I am very pleased. Sure beats the plastic Ryobis sold at HD for the same price. Cheap Craftsman miter with the wrongly aligned stick on angle guage (are you kidding me) don't compare too. Best comparison is the entry level Dewalt but that one comes in at at 200 so this is half price for about the same performance. Great for cutting 2x4 and wood laminate panels (though you have to flip the board for the final cut) without motor bogging down. That's where the laser guide helps with perfect cuts. 40 tooth blade trims true, great for being free. My 80 tooth laminate blade is almost the cost of the saw. Yes.. the dust bag is pretty much useless, it catches just the ultrafine particles, all the rest of the debris is around you.

This was my first miter/chop saw and I looked around alot before buying it. I compared Dewalt 723, Craftsman and couple of other models from home depot.

Dewalt was twice as expensive ($209) and Craftsmans from Sears was pretty darn cheap and althoug you could buy a sliding compound miter for less that $200, the quality wasn't good. There were many complaints about cheap plastic parts and even cheaper angle/cut quality. Other Ryobi and Makita were similar to Hitachi and Dewalt, but werent' that popular and couldn't find many reviews.

After all this analysis and talking to couple of contractors, they suggested that Hitachi is equally good and I ended up ordering one from amazon.

I arrived in 2 days (with free shipping) and since the blades are new you could you use it to cut moulding right out of the box. But may be when you cut 2x4s for few months, you might need a newer blade with more teeths. The construction of the saw itself is strong and it comes with few accessories.

Dust bag isn't very useful as it captures only part of the dust, but that's true with all other brands as well. I haven't tried mounting it on a stand, but have heard people complain about incompatibility with Dewalt miter stand.

Used it couple of time for miter and compound miter, and all the angles were perfect with fine cuts.

I highly recommed this saw.

BTW, its cheap @ $125, but the price here fluctuates alot and I was able to get it for $99 + taxes + free shipping.

This is my first Miter Saw, and I love it. Works great, has plenty of power and the 10-in blade gives it enough flexibility for larger stock. Blade never slows down and just powers through the wood. It is so easy to adjust the angles. What a great price Amazon offers, plus free shipping. I would have liked to have seen a finer toothed blade / more teeth, but oh well. I guess for most projects the blade is good, but I use it for detail work. Comes with the clamp which is nice, and compound feature will come in handy.

The saw works well and is good for the price. The cast body base isn't very thick and the first saw arrived broken, cracked and bent near the hole in the corner where the saw gets bolted to a workbench. This may be because it ships in a small factory box that then gets put inside another huge generic brown cardboard box for shipping with plenty of room to bang around inside. One or two small pieces of brown packing paper are loosely put around the factory box but there's tons of sloppy room between the boxes and the corners of the factory box arrived crushed both times. This kept me waiting on a project for a few days and that pissed me off. Amazon shipped me a new one for free and sent UPS to pick up the broken one. Time is money though, and this poor secondary packaging wasted my time. Luckily the 2nd saw was intact and immediately put to use.

The instructions aren't very good, I would have appreciated knowing that the compound angle tightening thread on the handle that locks the angle once you set it is a reverse thread.

Other than the poor shipping and mediocre instructions the saw itself works great, I am doing door and window casings and baseboard trim with it.