Hi Noah,
I'm a restoration carpenter doing full house renovations and custom work in San Francisco. I bought a CSC-50 early last year for on site use, it has seem some heavy work, and overall I am happy with it. I use it for cutting scribes, milling custom components such as paneling and wainscoting, and general installation / fitting work. I do not use it for any large sheet goods (not appropriate for this saw) or substantial ripping of framing material although I have for one or two pieces and it was fine. I do maintain a portable Dewalt on site for those types of applications where appropriate. I would buy the saw again as it is a good quality saw and it is quiet which is important where I am working and I don't hear that feature typically mentioned.
For reference, Festool is my primary tool platform and I am a dedicated user. I do have some criticisms about the saw however and hopefully in the future Festool will address them. Here they are:
#1 The blade seems to deflect a bit mid cut even with a new, appropriately toothed blade, slow feed rate, and using softer hardwoods such as poplar which I work with a lot. It's not enough to ruin a piece and a quick swipe or two with a block plane certainly cleans it up but I would not be relying on it for a glue joint quality cut and I wish Festool would offer a blade stiffener for it as you can watch the deflection as its happening which is not pleasant if you are a precise person.
#2 Multiple times even with dust extraction hooked up, the chassis will eventually collect enough dust that it impedes the blade travel of the saw from reaching its full height. Once this happens, and you ask for a full depth cut, the saw goes into re-callibration mode and in the end the only recourse seems to be to do a deep clean which takes some serious time to complete as some of the necessary areas for cleaning are not readily accessible. I think this has happened 4 or 5 times this year and it is my top complaint as it is inevitably occurs at a terrible time and requires at least 15 minutes to resolve.
#3 The angle adjust button and the power on button look very similar and it is easy to confuse the two. I'm sure someone out there will tell me I'm incompetent and should not be allowed to own the saw but the reality is when you have a brain full of measurements and you're trying to work through a list it's possible to confuse the two and accidentally start the saw when you're intending to adjust the angle of the blade. This has happened to me twice. It's now unlikely to happen again as I am very aware of the potential issue, however I don't think it should be so easy to confuse the two. In an entire lifetime of power tool use, this is the only tool where I have unintentionally turned it on. Twice.
#4 The battery life is not great. Not as abysmal as the CT SYS extractor, but some management its required to run the tool for most of the day. I started with twin 5ah batteries and it would maybe last a half day. I upgraded to twin 8ah batteries and it is now good until early afternoon but a full day is not realistic unless you are only doing a few cuts. There is one caveat however, the saw seems to eat up a lot of battery life in stand by mode. I have started to power down the saw when I don't expect another cut for 10-15 minutes or more and the battery life has improved quite a bit. With moderate cutting and power downs in between close to a full day on 8ah batteries is getting closer.
I do love how small, light, and quiet it is. The blade brake is nice and the sliding table has saved me more than once. The cart does a great job doubling as a stand for my portable planer and we even ate lunch on it this week when there were no other available horizontal surfaces. I did buy some aftermarket zero clearance inserts for it which I predominantly use and it has helped for my workflow. Typically I am cutting between 0 and +/- 4 degrees so I can generally leave it on.
If you're looking for a table saw to compliment another table saw for on site work this is a great option which I recommend. If this would be your only table saw, you might find the compact format is too restrictive. You say you have a Dewalt already so if you're willing to keep that, the CSC-50 will be a good answer for a lot of issues that the Dewalt struggles with.
Good luck!
It is a nice saw, but I use it mostly for cutting smaller things I can't with the TS55. I can see a use for it doing filler strips, but I don't have the space here for doing that with a table saw, and I can do it quicker with the TS55. If this was set up as a semi-perm station, I would feel differently.
