Festool576258 Planer HL 850 E-F-Plus

Festool is always high performance. I just this electric planer for specialty jobs. Do use it outdoor only, as I feel limited in "movement" with the extraction hose on.I do wish that FESTOOL for ALL their products would make attaching/detaching of the extraction hose easier. Should be possible with a "pull-over" fitting.

Decent planer. I don't use them on a regular basis and I bought it and the extra heads to make a hand scrapped looking floor. Unfortunately it takes off more than I wanted so had to use duct tape on the bottom of the planer to add more heighth so the planer would take off less than it's lowest setting. It's probably a great planer, just not what I thought it was

Most of my carpenters have not bought into the Festool world so they have little or no exposure to these tools. All they mostly know is how expensive they are. On two occasions recently I allowed two carpenters to use this planer. Both came back without prompting telling me it was far and away the best planer they have ever used. I already knew this but am just adding this bit about them to really give three reviews.

While the motor and features are good and well thought out, the build quality is terrible. I bought this hoping the steep price would deliver a precision machine as the price would've been amazing if it worked. As I frequently have to adjust wood to match the split, quarter and position of medullary rays to specific spots on violins, violas and cellos, thus I am seldom simply flattening boards, I typically need to remove more wood from various sides and this can be challenging with a bandsaw, especially with large boards and is not a simple process for a planer or jointer.Alas, the "tables" guiding the blade are not flat. The back plate is dished in most spots and bulging in one! And while the the front plate is acceptable, they are not even remotely coplanar. This results in extremely unflat results.I cannot find instructions to adjust this online, and there is no instruction manual for this machine on their website as of today (Dec 2, 2022). Hopefully someone can fact check me on the adjustment as I bought this a few years back and just now felt the need to leave a review as I am reminded of how frustrated I am with this purchase. But I can no longer find my instruction manual, but I don't recall any such instructions or I believe I would've followed it when I first used it.But all in all the WORST part of the entire purchase was the additional fence! looks like it is currently unavailable now but it is the 485018. This thing was something like an additional $150 and was supposed to be an adjustable angled fence. But the build quality is so poor. The single rivet that alters the angle wobbles significantly! It doesn't matter that you secure it, it cannot be used to reliable support one angle.This is the first and last Festool tool I will ever buy and I am embarrassed to own this. I do not have the time or patience to deal with their customer service and I didn't need to use it for the initial 3 month period I had to return it so now I'm stuck with it. I use it as a rough tool and finish with hand planes. It's job could be performed be a $50 electric hand planer from Harbor Freight. (But I wasted 3x that much on the fence)