Which Metal Cutoff Wheels Brand Wins?
We compared 6 metal cutoff wheels options head to head. Makita came out on top. See the measured results, the runner-up, the budget pick, and a link to the full test video.
The measured results
Every number below is read straight from the test. Scroll sideways to see all measurements. Products are listed in the order they finished.
| Product | Advertised width vs actual | Diameter loss | Speed | Advertised width | Weight loss | Weight | Width | Manufacturer claims | Wear |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1Makita | advertised 3/64 inch (0.052 as spoken); wheel started at 29 g and finished at 27 g (2 g lost) | started at 4.53 in, down to 4.4 in, 12.5 percent of the wheel used | cut faster than the Milwaukee; 'this is the best wheel we've tested so far' at that point in the video, before being tested against the Diablo | not tested | not tested | not tested | not tested | not tested | not tested |
| 2Diablo | not tested | started at 4.62 in, down to 4.38 in, 15 percent of the wheel used (a little more wear than the Makita and DeWalt) | the fastest cutting wheel tested up to that point in the video, even faster than the Makita, and made 'a fast and smooth cut' | 0.040 advertised, 0.0455 actual (spoken measurement) | 2 g | not tested | not tested | not tested | not tested |
| 3DeWalt | advertised 0.045, actual measured 0.070 (noticeably thicker than advertised) | started at 4.53 in, down to 4.42 in, 10 percent of the wheel used | described as cutting 'much slower' than the Warrior due to being a thicker wheel, and in the closing recap called 'the slowest cutting wheel we tested' | not tested | 2 g (vs Warrior's 7 g) | not tested | not tested | not tested | not tested |
| 4Milwaukee | advertised 0.045, actual measured 0.058 | started at 4.54 in, down to 4.18 in, 31 percent of the wheel used | 'a very fast cutting wheel compared to the Warrior and the DeWalt wheels', but wore down very quickly | not tested | not tested | started at 33 g, lost 5 g | not tested | not tested | not tested |
| 5Warrior (Harbor Freight) | advertised 1/16 inch; measured actual also looks like 1/16 inch (0.0625), i.e. this is the one wheel whose actual width matched its advertised width | started at 4.54 in, down to 4.05 in, 41 percent of the cutting wheel used to make one cut (highest wear of the six) | not tested | not tested | 7 g (highest of the six) | not tested | not tested | not tested | not tested |
| 6Lenox MetalMax MetalMax (diamond cutoff wheel) | not tested | not tested | cuts extremely slowly compared to the competition, taking 8 to 10 times longer to make a cut | not tested | not tested | not tested | 0.055 (spoken measurement) | designed for cutting metal, claimed to deliver 1,000+ cuts and last 30 times longer than regular wheels | showed virtually no wear and no noticeable material loss |
How it was tested
- cutting a half inch wide, 3 inch tall steel bar with a fixed-force (approximately 3.1 lb downward), motion-controlled grinder rig to remove human variance
- measuring wheel diameter before and after one cut to compute percent of wheel used
- weighing material/wheel loss after the cut
- checking actual blade width against the brand's advertised width
“If you're taking into account time as well as cost, it's hard to argue that the Makita isn't the best wheel because that thing cuts fast and it also lasts a quite a long time.”
Data notes and caveats
No prices are mentioned anywhere in this video for any of the six wheels, so priceMentioned and budgetPick are null throughout per the verbatim-or-omit rule. No explicit runnerUp is named by the narrator; Diablo is the closest alternative to Makita on raw cutting speed, and Lenox MetalMax is called out separately as best-in-class for durability but in a different use case (thin material, not general speed/cost tradeoff), so it is not treated as a competing runnerUp either. All five advertised-vs-actual width measurements taken together show a consistent pattern of measured width running thicker than advertised width across every non-Warrior brand (DeWalt, Milwaukee, Makita, Diablo); Warrior was the one wheel whose actual width matched its advertised spec. Chapters align one-to-one with each brand's section plus intro/setup/parameters/conclusion, so chapterMap is true.