In my informal survey of tool-store shelves, tile saws seem to be either fully-featured, water-cooled piles of awesome or rattle-trap store brands. There is very little occupying the middle of the road. Porter-Cable’s new PCC780LA 20-volt Max 7-inch Table Top Wet Tile Saw seems to fill that void. (Craftsman, too, which is owned by the same parent company, seems to have inherited some DNA from the Stanley brands. I’ve made a few cuts with the Craftsman version, and for occasional tile jobs, it seemed to cover most of the bases.)
Many years ago, Porter-Cable had a corded tile saw with a curvy armature and what amounted to a vertically mounted angle grinder, and I cut a decent amount of tile with it. This one is considerably better; it is lighter (27 pounds) and smaller, has no cord to bend a drip loop into, and has a carry handle (aka “roll cage,” according to Porter-Cable). The sliding table delivers 17 inches of on-table cutting capacity, which means you can cut a 12-inch-by-12-inch tile corner to corner. It includes on-board miter square and splash guards.
portercable.com
around $200
