Wood planers are a necessity when it comes to reducing the thickness of a piece of wood. I tested the best thickness planers on Amazon to help you achieve precision and smoothness.
FYI, prices and ratings are accurate as of time of writing.
1. DEWALT (DW735X) Thickness Planer -13-Inch, 3-Knife, 2-Speed
Highlight: 15 Amp, 20,000 rpm drive.
Helpful review: I need to build my presentation boxes for custom-built pistols. I have found some cigar box-style offerings online, and they will work, but the build quality is rough, to put it lightly. The boxes I can find online that are made with higher quality kill-the-profit margin of using those. So, in a typical fashion, I thought, Since I don't know anything about woodworking, I need to learn, and now I need a planner.
The first planer I looked at was DEWALT. The reviews talk about the knives getting dull quickly for this maker, so I ordered extra when I ordered this one for review. The Dewalt has an infeed and outfeed that I felt I needed for my box-making process. When delivered, this unit was packaged like a tank and looked great. This is a weighty box; use a hand truck to move it to the garage, then get help to pick it up.
I tried this planer on a spare piece of wood I had handy to see how it worked, and I must say this is very impressive. It improved a sock piece of wood that came off the shelf, supposedly ready to be made into stuff; it's now even more ready and awe-inspiring. I hooked up the shop vac to the dust port to keep the garage clean and not make a bigger mess than usual. When the planer is running, I can hear and feel the exhaust fans running inside the machine, and I am pretty happy that I out-thought my mess-making. With this machine's exhaust, I am sure chips and sawdust would be thrown from one side of the garage to the other.
After getting the sides of the presentation box cut to size, I ran the wood through the planner to make things smooth and precisely the right thickness. What I like the most about using the planer is that I can reduce the heavy and overly thick boards to a more presentation box style, which looks much better now. Being able to start with rough-cut lumber and end with perfection is a thing I did not even think about until I got a hold of one of these planers. — Mark Bailey
Get it from Amazon now: $799.00 & FREE Returns
2. WEN Benchtop Thickness Planer - 12.5-Inch, 2-Blade
Highlight: Up to twenty thousand cuts a minute.
Helpful review: This WEN planer is my favorite for my needs at this level of production and skill, or lack of skill. Making presentation boxes is a low-skill area on the woodworker side of my business. I know this is a low-skill area because I can do it, and I have zero skills. I cannot speak to the furniture-making value of this planer or anything that magical woodworkers can create. Still, it works perfectly for what I do with it.
WEN is half the price or less than other planers and performs at the same or close to the same level as the more expensive machines. I use a sander when I am done planning, so I am good with this choice for many reasons. For a machine I have on a rolling platform that sits in the closet most of the time, the cost and effectiveness of what it does are perfect. This may not be the right choice if I were an actual woodworker.
All I had to do to get this machine working was take it out of the packing, hook up the handle and dust tube, wax the in and out feeds, and give a Prolix to everything I could see that looked like it needed some lube. I also ensured the planer was level on the roller platform and had adjustable level casters to get level and stay level when in use.
I put some planks from an old pallet through this planer, and I may use the pallet wood for some of these presentation boxes as the used wood looks pretty cool. I think old-school revolvers would look great in a box of aged wood stained with a dark finish like mahogany. It will be very cool. The planner will help me make the hardwood boxes I deliver, which are custom 1911s that I call the executive style CCW guns. This pistol has leather-wrapped slabs on the handle, and everything is smooth and shiny.
Using this planner requires all the safety gear that goes to the range, so anyone who is a shooter will have eye and hearing protection. Do not run this machine without earmuffs or foam plugs to protect your hearing. I don't know the sound levels on this machine, but I can tell everyone it is twice as loud as my air compressor or sounds like that when I use it to plane wood. — Frank N. Neue
Get it from Amazon now: $369.99 & FREE Returns
3. DEWALT (DW734) Benchtop Planer - 12.5-Inch, 3-Knife
Highlight: Very long in/out feed tables.
Helpful review: This planer is very heavy for a benchtop style. This is a problem if I want to move it around, like to a job site. The weight is a plus more than a minus for someone who will put this in their shop and leave it there. The weight will keep vibrations very low, and the finish will be the best. When lighter-weight units are used, there are more opportunities to get better by sending out some things that can come from the planner.
I used this briefly to see if I wanted to keep it for the price it would cost me. I was not able to put vast amounts of board feet through it.
I have read many reviews talking about how long the blades last, and to me, for what I do, I may not ever put that much wood through the machine to change the knives. When these ships are used, the knives can be reversed and come with a spare set. I am sure for my needs I will never need to buy some. For others, that is true; woodworkers may need to purchase new blades in about a year or two.
This machine will take a very rough piece of pallet wood and make it look like a new piece of pine. I looked for some very warped or hammered slats to see what a planner like this could do, and to be honest, I could not find a thing I could not do. The finish was so smooth that I did not bother sanding them afterward. — Greg A. Campbell
Get it from Amazon now: $579.00 & FREE Returns
4. CRAFTSMAN Benchtop Planer - 2-Knife Solid Steel Cutter Head
Highlight: Poly-V cutter head.
Helpful review: I saw that Craftsman had a planer and thought I would try out the brand as I have a history with them, like many others my age. I have to say, Craftsman has dropped the quality control of manufacturing.
The in and out boards needed adjustment, which is expected when things are shipped; I did not expect the factory to over-tighten them and strip the heads. Maybe it's robots assembling them, or perhaps the folks putting them together have a high piece rate requirement; either way, the quality suffered.
The machine is made from low-quality materials. This is only an issue if this planer is used for more than hobby stuff. The stamped metal would be acceptable to plane down a board now and then, reducing the weight if I needed to haul it around. The insides are strong where it counts. The four-column setup is solid.
The motor can get challenged with more complicated wood, and if a knot is found, it may stall the machine. The RPMs max out at 8000. This is the slowest of the items I chose to review. The dust collector port is overrun by the amount of chips this little machine can throw.
Always use a respirator; hell, we all have a drawer full of COVID masks we don't need any more; get one if nothing else.
This machine cost just under 300 bucks on Amazon when I was looking for products, so if budget is a concern, this one may be the winner for you. If higher quality and better performance are needed, you may need to look at others in this review a little harder. — Marty German
Get it from Amazon now: $299.00 & FREE Returns
5. Delta Portable Planer - 13-Inch, Disposable
Highlight: A genuinely portable machine.
Helpful review: If I needed to pull this machine out of a closet or off of a shelf in the back room to do some woodworking and then put it away, this is the machine I would choose for my shop. Luckily, I can put mine on a roll-away without lifting or carrying it around. If my profession was woodworking on-site and I had to move the planner around, Delta would win hands down.
Delta keeps the weight of this machine down by using Lexan on the sides instead of metal. Lexan is very tough and will hold up for a long time. On top of being lightweight, the Lexan sides are also rustproof, as plastics don't rust.
Again, what better option to haul around from worksite to worksite? The insides are built out of high-quality metal parts and fitted so well that I could not get any noticeable movement out when I tried to prove the plastic siding was this weak.
This is a two-blade cutter and blade changes are effortless. The tools to change blades are included and even stored in the machine itself, again, portability at its best. I read reviews about the motor getting bogged down and taking deeper passes with exotic woods like Purpleheart. I don't have the skills to do anything with exotics, so I don't know from first-hand experience how it operates on these. Poplar, pine, and walnut do not even phase this machine. — Thomas B. Hunnicutt
Get it from Amazon now: $599.99 & FREE Returns