Festool launched new ETSC 2 cordless sanders, which they claim are “now even better, with optimized ergonomics, maximum freedom of movement, and an LED ring light.”
Their existing cordless sanders work with proprietary battery packs, but could also be powered by AC power cord.
From everything I’ve seen so far, Festool ditched the compact battery form factor, went with the same 18V battery that works with most of their other cordless tools, and eliminated the hybrid AC power capability.
Advertisement
The new Festool ETSC 2 cordless sanders also feature smartphone-controlled lighting with adjustable brightness and afterglow duration. You also get a dedicated lighting button on the tool itself.
Their website does not make it clear whether the app-connectable tool can also activate Festool Bluetooth-equipped dust extractor vacuums. I’d presume that if the sanders can connect to your phone that it can also activate compatible Festool vacuums, but explicit confirmation would be nice.
Festool says that the sander works with 27mm dust vacuum hoses, and comes with a dust collection bag so that vacuum attachment isn’t necessary.
- 125mm (5″) sanding pad (ETSC 2 125)
- 150mm (6″) sanding pad (ETSC 2 150)
- Variable speed
- 6K – 10K OPM
The sanders ship with a front surface protector, dust bag, and Systainer tool box. Kits also include a charger and 2x 4Ah batteries.
EU ETA: February 2025
Discussion
Festool launched their first hybrid-powered cordless sanders a few years ago, see New Festool Hybrid Cordless + Corded Sanders.
Advertisement
The sanders weren’t compatible with other Festool 18V tools, but the batteries were compact and the tools also allowed for AC power.
I’ve never seen them in person; I avoided the older hybrid-style sanders because they lacked automatic dust extractor activation when battery-powered, and who wants to buy into a cordless power tool system that only has 3 tools?
That these new Festool cordless sanders lose AC power compatibility is a big disappointment, but at least they work with Festool’s other 18V batteries.
But hey, at least you get smartphone connectivity, so that you can finally control the light on your sander with an app.
It looks like Festool might only be replacing their ETSC 125 random orbit sander with the “now even better” ETSC 2 125, with the ETSC 2 150 being a new option. Perhaps replacements of the RTSC 400 and DTSC 400 sanders aren’t far behind.
The new Festool sanders are only shown in product images with the brand’s 18V 4Ah batteries; they might not work with larger or higher capacity batteries. That’s probably not a big deal, but just something to be aware of.
Would you consider this to be an upgrade?
Personally, I’m more looking forward to the new Milwaukee M18 Fuel cordless sander.
Bosch’s new 6″ cordless sander is also high up on my list. There’s been no news yet.
Mark
What’s the advantage to making these sanders cordless? If you use dust collection, you already have a hose, so you’re tethered to your vacuum anyway. I love their corded sanders and track saw, but not sure what the target market for cordless sanders is. I wonder how many people want to invest in another battery system and have the limitations that cordless tools can have. Also, they announce the weight of hte new sanders? I’d imagine they’re a lot heavier and bulkier now.
JohnBCS
If you also use one of their cordless vacs, you can be in a situation where there’s no wall power and still get some work done.
Noah
This seems like it would be great but only in a very specific “no power jobsite that’s in the finish carpentry stage” kind of situation. I personally would never be in that situation, and I am still not ready to invest in a cordless sander because of it. Nor would I invest in a cordless dust collector. There’s not enough juice to run them for hours like we regularly have to as painters who do everything from prep of old exterior trim to installing new trim and painting it. It seems we’ll be tethered to a cord for years to come.
Another Bob
Same here. If I’m using the sander I’m using the shop vac. If it’s a quick scuff job before paint I’ll just use a sanding block.
Maybe I’m a curmudgeon but certain tools I just don’t see the allure of being cordless.
Those 3-D printed clips sound nice tho. I just use electrical tape to attach the AC cord to the vacuum hose. Kinda pain when you need to remove them at the end of the job. One of these days I’ll just buy a dedicated shop vac hose.
Jronman
Festool claims if you have two batteries the sander will run continuous with a 30 minute runtime and a 30 minute charge time.
Mark
that doesn’t seem like much runtime. i bought my sanders to sand large tabletops. there are times i’m sanding for well over an hour. it’s way easier to just plug in my sander to my festool dust extractor and sand away. now i’m wondering if i need to buy a backup sander now because i don’t want a cordless one when mine inevitably dies
carl barbour
I get over 45 minutes run time with the first version of these sanders.
Kee
If I’m on a job site that doesn’t have any power, I’d rather bring a generator. I love the light on the sander, but festool is making a wrong move here
Scott K
I totally understand this question – I have a corded sander that I often use with a shopvac. Having a second tether does make things trickier – making sure you don’t tangle the sander cord with the vac hose gets annoying. My Bosch sander works well enough for my needs, so I haven’t gone cordless yet.
Goodie
I have some 3d printed plastic clips that turn the two tethers into a single one. Works great.
MM
Having both a power cord and a vac hose never really bothered me, on the rare occasion I had hassle from that I either wrapped the power cord around the vac hose a few times or secured it with a few pieces of masking tape.
But sometimes I grab a sander for some quick job, done outdoors so dust collection isn’t a concern, and for that it’s nice to not have to mess with any cord or hose.
Goodie
Link to the file for 3d printing. There’s also folks selling these on Amazon, Etsy, and all sorts of other places. If you have a 3d printer, they are dirt cheap to print up.
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5874778
S
I can see an advantage to a dual-battery setup for smaller jobs. Not having to drag extension cords all over the place for a minor refinishing can save a ton of time.
Mark
maybe, but when i’m sanding a table top, i don’t want to be swapping batteries. and since it’s festool, i assume the batteries aren’t cheap. i messaged them to see if the corded ones are going away, and if so, we’ll be looking for recommendations because i’m not interested in cordless sanders in my shop
Harrison
The point of a cordless sander isn’t production work in the shop- AC or pneumatic wins there. Festool won’t be discontinuing their corded sanders any time soon.
These sanders are for quick work on the jobsite, where all the advantages of cordless tools apply. Any job where you might want to run from room to room, or hit a bunch of spots around the exterior of a house, especially up a ladder. I would say this applies to finish carpenters and painters, plasterers, etc.
Another big use would be for custom cabinetry and millwork installation. Many times pieces need to be adjusted onsite for proper fitment, or even finish touched up from damage. Nobody wants to run an extension cord for 30 seconds of sanding. Businesses who use Festool in the shop, may want to outfit their vans and installation kits with tools from the same brand. This is the whole reason for Festool’s cordless lineup to exist.
While the vac port is nice to have when needed, I would say cordless sanders are more likely to be used with the dust bag than their corded counterparts.
Bengt
Really? If you work on jobsites sometimes one is doing exterior work and a dust bag is enough when working outside. Or maybe on high end homes when sanding on scaffolds. I can think of may workflows where cordless is awesome.
Christian
honestly. having these sanders. when moving around there really is a difference with only having to manage the vac hose. esp is your vac hose is 12’
BobH
With the Festool drills I own, the bluetooth to the dust extractor is in the battery, not the tool. I would assume that is the case here too.
Nick
If I’m not mistaken, Festool can activate their vacuums with Bluetooth built into the battery, not the tool, so most of their tools will not do the dust extractor activation… a really clever way to upgrade their entire cordless tool platform without needing to replace the actual tools. The previous hybrid sanders had Bluetooth enabled batteries available, and the new one will use Bluetooth batteries that already exist for the same purpose.
Jronman
Yup and to connect tools to the app you also need to connect a battery that has Bluetooth if I am not mistaken….. I should probably verify with a non bluetooth battery.
Mark
yeah, but you have to either buy a bluetooth compatible dust extractor or add it to yours. my festool dust extractor is pretty new and doesn’t support bluetooth
Julian Tracy
I use Bosch cordless sanders (jumped into the Bosch battery system to do so) and am very happy with their ergonomics. Same reason I love a cordless track saw even if used with a corded vacuum, I like cordless sanders. I never need to use a sander more than 15-20 minutes for what I do and the ability to use them outside or just pick them up for a few minutes to soften an edge or use them with my cordless Festool MIDI makes them a game changer.
The lower profile ergonomics vs the Mak or Dewalt versions makes them both very easy on the hands. Currently have the 5” RO and the 1/4 pad/delta pad versions – that one uses the same sandpaper as my festool versions, so I’ll be selling those off.
Looking forward to the new M12 3” RO sander, will probably sell off my Rotex 90 after getting that, and the newly announced M12 5 and 6” RO sanders should be very interesting options as well.
Jronman
Why not keep the Rotex for when you need to engage the gear system while sanding? The m12 has no Rotex like mode on it.
MM
Speaking of the Rotex, I’d be very happy if one of the big cordless tool companies got off their rear and offered a cordless DA sander. I’m hoping we might see one from Milwaukee since they seem to be paying at least some attention to autobody tools lately.
Jronman
I have the ETSC 125 Hybrid sander. The 18v Ergo batteries do come with bluetooth therefore wireless activation is possible with these sanders. The kit I got didn’t have Bluetooth equipped Wrgo batteries as I bought an older sku that was on sale. They were phasing out the old Ergo batteries for the new Bluetooth equipped Ergo batteries at the time. I appreciate that they charge using the same chargers as the regular 18v batteries which is not something many talk about. Many see they are a different battery then basically act like the world is going to end.
Another thing I am seeing that I don’t understand is people are saying this is a replacement to the ETSC 125 but I haven’t seen those claims from Festool. Also it looks more like a cordless version of the ETS EC sander than an updated ETSC. Did Festool explicitly say this will replace the existing cordless sander or is everyone just “assuming”. I hope people are wrong as there has been a place for both the ETS and ETS EC corded sanders.
Stuart
Presuming.
Brands don’t say “now even better” and then continue selling their older model. They usually won’t explicitly say “replacements are coming” because they want people to buy the older tools before the replacements arrive.
The line is also called ETSC 2. Do you really think they’re going to have ETSC 125 and ETSC 2 125 sold side by side? When has Festool ever done that with their track saws?
Mark
i hope they’re keeping the corded ones. i’m probably not the only person who sands big projects and has zero interest in constantly changing sander batteries. unfortunately i don’t think there’s any alternative to the festool sanders. the ete-ec ones are the best on the market in my opinion
Stuart
I don’t think they’d get rid of their corded sanders, just maybe the same-size cordless + AC model.
Jronman
Festool has done it with their sanders already. ETSC 125, ETS 125, and ETS EC 125. Very similar names but very different sanders.
Slavi
If they only work with the 4.0 batteries, it’s actually a big deal. Those batteries seem to be poor quality, half of mine are defective- either drain too fast or don’t fully charge. I have two that completely refuse to charge.
That’s super annoying on their cordless vacuums, since they use two batteries. I put in two fully charged batteries showing and 5 minutes later, one is dead.
Lyle
Are your batteries still under warranty? Is it possible you ran the batteries too low? You might be able to jump start them by connecting them to charged batteries. It’s possible to run them too low to be charged because the charger refuses to charge batteries that have a voltage below some threshold. I’ve had this happen to some Dewalt batteries and one Festool battery. Brought them all back to life and they charge fine now.
bg100
The one huge drawback to cordless sanders is static electricity in the hose. I fried the speed control on my DeWalt cordless sander, and no amount of foil tape and copper wire could fix the constant shocking against my hand. Now I just use my corded sanders, which have the advantage of being grounded.
eddiesky
My corded Dewalt 5speed orbital doesn’t have ground- its a two-prong end with one polarized.
If you have static shocks, you need humidity in the shop. And proper anti-static hose to the vacuum. But man, sorry to hear you fried your cordless one.
Also good to have a static mat to work on that can be grounded and rubber sole work boots/shoes. I’ve had a pair of non-static protected and everything metal I touched..ZAP.
Stuart
You can get anti-static hoses from Festool, Makita, and others. I really like Festool hoses and bought a couple of sizes for use with other vacs. You might still have to ground the hose at the vac-side.
Harrison
Looks good. I don’t see much harm in ditching the AC functionality. Anyone in the market for this will already own a decent corded/pneumatic RO sander, or have the means to purchase a separate tool as needed.
The lighting looks great, hopefully we see that on all new sanders going forward.
I don’t see a ton of appeal to the Milwaukee, unless your #1 goal is to only purchase tools from Home Depot. It’s a big improvement over their previous cordless sanders, but still quite tall. The Rigid Subcompact looks to be a better design.
Robert Dailey
Bluetooth compatibility with vacuum.
Festool built Bluetooth into their battery packs. So you pair the battery with the vacuum and that battery will then trigger the vacuum while it’s being used.
IMO this is much better than systems like Makita that require an equipped tool and a separate chip to run.
Jronman
The nice thing about Makita is you can buy an adapter that fits any vac with corded tool activation support. This means you aren’t locked to Makita vacs to have cordless activation for Makita tools.
Adam
I have a Festool ETS sander, I usually connect it to a dust extractor , I guess a cordless sander would be convenient sometimes , the light looks nice but it’ll drain the battery more, I don’t like the idea of of adjusting the light with my iPhone , I don’t want to use my phone with my tools, it just makes things more complicated.
Stuart
I feel that some brands have been adding things like smartphone light controls as just another way to add a pittance in added parts so they can charge users a lot more money for average tools.
Andy
Festool has a corded version of all three of the hybrid sanders as well as the new brushless one. They didn’t discontinue the ets125 when they released the ets/ec 125 because they serve a slightly different purpose at a different price point.
The current hybrid sanders will activate the dust extractor remotely via the Bluetooth battery as well as working fine with a bag attached. On a jobsite the bag comes in handy for quick stuff… like the stuff you would use a cordless sander for.
I’m glad other companies like Milwaukee and Bosch are coming out with track saws and sanders that are competitive with festool but they are years behind.