Evolution R185SMS-Li Review – UK Tried & Tested

My first job with this saw came before I’d even fitted the blade. Straight out of the box, the carriage slide wouldn’t seat. I pushed it into the neck, no click, tried again, still nothing. Turned out the locating lugs on the slide arms had tripped on the way here, a known thing on these, and resetting them just meant pushing the lug back in and easing the little plunger forward with a flat screwdriver. Two minutes once I knew what I was looking at, properly alarming for the two minutes before that. Assembly itself is only three main parts, the rotary base and neck, the carriage slides, and the cutting head, with the blade fitted last once everything else clicks together. Not a long job once the lugs behave.

The job I had lined up was coving into a corner and a length of box section for a bracket, the same day. That’s a proper test of whether multi material cutting is real or just a marketing line. It’s real. This saw cuts wood including wood with nails in it, 50mm mild steel box section with a 3mm wall, and 6mm plate, with the same blade fitted throughout. I swapped nothing between the timber and the box section cut, same blade, same setup, just a slower feed on the steel and letting the blade do the work rather than forcing it.

Overview and first impressions

The rotary table swings a full 50 degrees either way with positive stops at 45, 30, 22.5 and 15 degrees both sides. That covers most square corners without touching the fine adjustment. Crown moulding gets its own dedicated setting. You wouldn’t stumble onto it by accident. There’s a small spring loaded pin on the bevel mechanism, normally left pulled out, marked 33.9 degrees. Push it in and the bevel locks at exactly that angle instead of the usual 45, and paired with the mitre table turned to 31.6 degrees that’s the combination for cutting crown moulding. I ran a test piece through it and the mitre landed clean first go, more than I can say for most of my own attempts at coving over the years using a protractor and a bit of hope. The trigger has an interlock lever built into the handle, it won’t fire unless you slide that across first, and there’s a soft start too rather than the blade lurching straight up to full speed. Worth having when you’re holding a length of coving steady with the other hand.

Specifications and scores

The crown moulding bevel pin sits at 33.9 degrees, deployed by pushing it inward from its normal pulled out position, and paired with the 31.6 degree mitre stop above it is the full combination the saw is built to give. The whole machine measures 285mm high by 590mm long by 560mm wide, small enough to sit on a bench without needing its own permanent station. The dust extraction port is a standard 35mm and takes most workshop vacuum hoses without an adapter beyond what’s already supplied.

How it performed in our tests

One thing worth knowing straight off: don’t run the dust bag while cutting metal or nailed wood, clean wood only. Makes sense once you think about it, hot swarf and a paper bag don’t mix. The blade change itself is straightforward too. The hex key needed lives clipped onto the machine so it’s never the thing you can’t find, and a spindle lock button holds the arbor still while you loosen it rather than needing a second pair of hands.

The depth stop lives folded flat against the side of the machine until you rotate it out into position, and once it’s set with the locking nut it limits how far the head travels down, so the blade stops short of cutting all the way through rather than going the full depth. Handy for a trench cut. Reposition the workpiece slightly and run the same cut again to widen it out. I didn’t need it on this job but it’s worth knowing it’s there, not every mitre saw in this bracket bothers with one. There’s a minimum workpiece size too, anything smaller than roughly 125mm long, 30mm wide and 3mm thick needs extra support before you cut it. Easy to miss when you’re working with short offcuts and small trim pieces.

Battery system and runtime

The compatible battery list runs both Evolution’s own EXT packs and a set of Erbauer branded ones alongside them, same part numbers slotted in either brand. Not cross compatible by luck, it’s the same platform sold under two names. Good news if you’ve already got Erbauer batteries knocking about from somewhere else and assumed you’d need to start a separate collection for this saw. It does specifically say to skip the smallest 2Ah pack though. It’ll fit and run fine, but the saw asks enough of a battery that a small one won’t last as long as it should.

Performance and limitations

The LED guide line does the same job as the shadow systems on other cordless mitre saws, throwing the blade’s shadow onto the timber rather than a laser dot, no adjustment needed out of the box. There’s an electronic brake too. It pulls the blade to a stop noticeably faster once you let go of the trigger rather than letting it spin down on its own, useful when you’re working close to the table between cuts. The motor is brushed. The only real tell that the brushes need replacing eventually is excessive sparking, and that’s a service centre job, not something to sort at the bench yourself. It’s louder than most saws in this bracket too, so keep ear defenders to hand.

It weighs 8.6kg without a battery in, light enough that carrying it between the two ends of this job wasn’t a chore. Lift it by the two dedicated carry handles rather than the blade guard. I registered it online the same evening, since the guarantee only actually starts once that’s done rather than from the date on the receipt. This exact model also gets sold under a US product code running at 20V. Same machine, just labelled to the local battery convention.

Final verdict, is it worth it

I handed the job over finished, coving mitred clean into both corners and the bracket cut square, and the thing that stuck with me wasn’t any single spec figure. It was that a saw this size does exactly what it’s meant to across three different materials without needing three different tools to get there.