DeWALT 20V MAX XR 5" Brushless Random Orbital Sander w/ 1.7Ah Battery & Charger Expired

I wonder why some people thumb it down.
The best price ever for this Sander was around $65 that involved Home Depot hack about a year ago, and that was only a bare tool with no battery or charger.

I have this sander and like it quite a bit but the supplied battery is borderline inadequate for a tool like a orbital sander.

So, I'm at deeps on a fairly irresponsibly often basis and, not for nothin', but...

...the best I ever saw this for was $49.96, and it was ONE unit that was an open-box return, in-store only (on the clearance shelf)...

...and that was tool only. Even if the battery and charger are entry level/what most people here are calling "crap" (which isn't really "crap" it's just not very practical for someone who needs this to work on a larger scale than, say, sanding the edges of a child's birdhouse school project before assembly, or if you're fixing a hole in the wall and want to feather the edges so the patch isn't noticeable-- past that, in moderate-to-heavy use, it would be inadequate and you'd find yourself wishing you had a bigger battery. And it's not so much the power-- DeWalt, to their credit, provide a product that will handle most the applications the larger batteries will (with a tool like this, anyways), but the thing'll die before you even get anywhere, is the issue.

If I didn't have any DeWalt tools, I may hesitate to purchase if I planned on using it in a semi-professional-to-professional setting because, like I said, that 1.7Ah just doesn't cut it for an orbital sander, unless you're doing some small/quick job... but, if I had larger DeWalt tools, and was constantly needing the batteries charged and only had one other charger, or mine had broken, and the other tools I had operate fine on the 1.7Ah batteries... then yeah, this not only makes sense, it's a deal and a half.

If you're just starting out with DeWalt, for any "real"/practical application, you'd preferably have a 3Ah or higher battery, which means you gotta buy that, too, and unless you've got somewhere to get a bitchin' deal on one of those right now, I'd say just hold your pennies, because you can find one on OfferUp, or Ebay, or sometimes even in-store on the clearance shelves, for cheaper than this, tool-only.

So it all depends on your application, how badly you need the thing (i.e. want vs. need), how much extra cash you have to spend on tools, if your company pays the bill or you do if it's for work, which store close to you has this available (because I tried, and only a store 30 miles away had one, and they tried to charge me $99.00 for shipping-- that's not a typo, either. 20$ more than the actual tool, so it was $178.00 total to get it delivered which, you know, hahahahahahahahaha), and if there is one with some in stock, like there was with me, deciding if saving 20 bucks off the regular price you can find these for when they go on sale usually is worth the drive of 30 miles with gas at 5 bucks a gallon.

For me, it's a no. But, again, my uses, circumstances, location, and "need", heavily factor in that decision which, when weighed, is the only obvious correct choice for ME.

If you fit any I mentioned, or think up another way to justify that $79.00 burning a hole in your pocket, and are located close enough to a lowes with in-stock quantities allowing you to buy it, then, by all means, it's a great deal.

But simply saying "it sucks because of the battery", or "it sucks because i've seen the price lower"... then adding the "but it was tool only on black friday open-box" or something else, is a garbage way to represent this, and not fair at all compared to regular market value, especially since no one can say that for sure unless you know the other person's life and can weigh the options pragmatically.

So, decide for yourself. But just know that if you pull the trigger, and ultimately decide you maybe didn't need to, that you got a hell of a deal that any of us would be STOKED with "settling with" or "getting stuck with" and, ultimately, it's still a f'n' DeWalt cordless orbital sander so, you know, good stuff, man.

That's all I got.


Edit: ((ADDED PHOTOS OF PROJECT I DID ONLY USING THIS DEWALT AND BATTERY))

I didn't think I'd find these specific photos, but google photos search feature "hardwood floors" through my 79,000 photos of my kid and bam, there they were.

I used a dewalt orbital sander, just like this one, for this little project. The before photo is just when I first pulled the couch out to get back there, but, they had actually gauged a 3 ft huge mark into the floors which you can't see in the photos, by her and her friend dragging each other in a cart that the wheel snapped off on, but decided to keep dragging it anyways-- but that's besides the point-- the point I'm making is that I sanded, filled, re-polyurethaned, sanded,poly'd, sanded, poly'd, wet sanded, poly'd, and feathered it into the existing finish as best I could, and took a picture of the after. I think it came out pretty well, but I did the whole sanding job each time I sanded on ONE 1.7Ah dewalt battery and this exact sander-- but I remember distinctly it dying the first run RIGHT as I was starting to think "ok well that should be about good".

So I hope that helps you judge just how much "use" you can get out of one.

Cheers