The Festool OF 2000E/1 Router

By Joseph Fusco

This was Festool’s entry into the big and powerful end of the US router market. It has a street price of $475.00 with the following ...
• 8mm and ½" collets
• M12 to ½" adapter
• Dust Hood
• Edge Guide
• Micro Adjuster
• Adjustment Wrench
• #4 Systainer

This picture shows pretty much what you get and to be honest, there is really nothing ground breaking about this router. Right out of the box I noticed that the plunge mechanism would stick right at the bottom of its travel. I tested the newer PC routers and the plunge did the same thing. The handles are two piece and they were a bit loose and needed to be tightened as well.

The plunge depth adjustment turret is made up of three varying lengths of round head machine screws which are the same as just about every other router. The plunge stop located at the top of the travel post is also identical to many other routers. The single wrench with push button stop is a standard as well with many other routers. It would have been an excellent option to have added the ratchet collet as on the OF 1400.

Once you turn the router on you can feel that in spite of its other common features it runs very smooth, quiet and has lots of power. The router has good balance for its lighter weight and the dust collection was good as well, but it has no prevision for a chip cup like on the OF 1400 which greatly increases the dust collection. The design of the handles puts both the plunge lock and on/off switch right at your thumbs which makes them both easy to operate.

The carrying case or Systainer is another nice option that holds all the attachments for the router easily and in one convenient place. The Systainers have another nice feature about them and that is that can chip together which makes for easy carrying of several of them.

Lastly I’d like to say that all in all you could purchase a router for about 60% of the cost of this oneand get all the same features and benefits.