We are renovating a part of the apartment and endless sanding is needed on various places. The choice is simple either use sanding paper and "sand" your arms till death or use the machinery. Naturally we opted for the machinery. Reckoned this kind of buy is never "wrong" since such things come always come in handy.

I always imagined these will be much more expensive but to my surprise this one came at around Euro50 (it was on promotion), I see it is £49.99 on Amazon.co.uk at the time of writing (sumer deal) which is trust you me a bargain for this machinery!

Some things need to be clear, I am no physical worker. I mean I do have stamina and all and do love sports but sanding, painting or anything related is a pain for me, the noises, the dust, the stench... However working with this one was more than tolerable I must say.

Firstly this one is really lightweight - 2.2kg to be exact but in all honesty it feels like a lot less. The handle is very easy on the hands (even the small soft hands I posses) and after hours of working with this one (without gloves) there were no blisters.

Operating the sander is quite simple, you do not have to be a rocked scientist to plug it in the electricity (how awesome would it be if it were cordless???) and pressing the on button. Magic! You can also regulate the speed. Naturally before the use you need to attach the sanding sheet - and this is jet another effortless job because of Velcro. It is easier than tying your shoes - if you ever had Velcro shoes (now or when you were a kid) you know what I am talking about. You just press the sanding sheet on the sander and it will stick (and not fall off until you remove it). You get 1 sanding sheet with the sander, additional can be bought in a store and come fairly cheap (example from Amazon.co.uk £2.87 for 10 Silverlines sanding sheets).

Firstly I sanded a few wood surfaces to get them ready to be repainted - the sander moves smoothly, it is very quiet and does not vibrate a lot - so it is easy to use for longer periods of time. If you make circular motions not much force from your side will be needed, the machine will do most by itself - what more do you want. I did not have to apply additional pressure for this kind of work and the surface was sanded evenly. Love it.

Next thing on the menu was the wall. It had quite a few cracks and they needed to be sanded. I remembered we once used a sander in the past somewhere and that there was lots and lots of dust so I equipped myself with safety mask, safety goggles and one time use safety clothes (the only size they had was XXL, mind you I am S) I looked horrible but well prepared! So I started the sander and started fighting those nasty cracks. I needed to apply some pressure to do this though, the machine did not slow down when I did. After a few minutes of sanding and sweating in my not so breathable protective gear I realized there was almost no dust. It has a built in dust extraction (it's a sander vacuum cleaner hybrid heh heh) and this one seems to work. I got rid of the gear and enjoyed the rest of the sanding.

Dust gets stored in the back "dust storage compartment" that needs to be emptied. The instructions on how to empty it were simple but I did struggle a bit twisting and turning it to open. Closing it was a bit of a struggle to, but once I got the hang of it I was on the role.

To draw the line - cheap, effective, dust free what is there not to like!