ALEKO 690E Electric Variable Speed Drywall Sander with Telescopic Handle 600 Watts

This has been a massive time-saver for me. I did not purchase it for drywall work, instead I was looking for something to help speed up the process of removing the peeling paint on my house's siding for re-painting. I paired this with some very, very course sandpaper (16 and 24 grit) that I glued to some felt from the craft store to make custom sanding disks to fit this, and it has worked amazingly well. It efficiently strips the loose paint left over after power-washing, and leaves a good surface for the primer to adhere to.With a slight modification (using only a screwdriver) the extending handle and the keyed tack it sits in can be removed, and similarly sized electrical conduit is a perfect fit and can be used in it's place - effectively extending the reach to over 10 feet, great for high exterior walls.It worked so well for the outside of my house, that I used the same type of custom course sanding disks when refinishing my old deck. The neck on this sander can bend around 90 degrees or so, which allows it to be comfortably used as a cheap floor sander while standing up and pushing it around. With this sander paired with the power-washer, I was able to convert an old deck with uneven boards that looked like it would need to be replaced to a almost-new looking finish with a smooth and even surface. While a proper floor-sander would have been faster, this was cheaper, easy and reasonably fast for my small deck, and far easier on the back than crawling around with a belt sander or something similar.I haven't used it for drywall yet, or bothered with the vacuum attachment (since I was working outdoors anyway) but I am sure it will work fine when I do.As others mentioned, it is fairly top-heavy with the weighty motor near the end, and can be exhausting after a long period of use (especially when attached to 10 feet of conduit), but I could use the workout anyway, so I can't really complain!

I was thinking "I got what I paid for" when I opened the package. It's a low cost tool. No doubt. Reminds me a tool from that national discount tool store, you know the one. Despite the lower quality fit and finish, it's well worth the price compared to a couple days of rental or a $500 "professional" tool. It sands great. Here's some things I learned to deal with on this cheapo tool:1. Use 150 grit or finer sandpaper and run the tool at full speed. Half speed or slower and the motor bogs down and stalls.2. Like others, the perimeter brush arrived smashed. Aleko was great in providing a replacement. But it stinks. The bristles are too firm and too long. You have to push really hard to get the brush to deform for the sanding pad to make contact with the wall. Once one side of the brush deforms then the sanding pad digs in and gouges the wall or ceiling. I removed the brush and went Red Green on it with duct tape. Simply wrapped a strip around the sanding head to be about 1/4" past the disk surface. Works great.3. The tool DOES NOT shock you. It's the static electricity that is generated pulling dry drywall dust through a plastic vacuum hose at Mach 2. If you've sanded with a manual vacuum attachment, you've been shocked just like this tool. Best thing to do is keep one finger on the aluminum extension shaft to ground yourself out. Static charge will be dissipated to the tool ground. It's a CE certified tool...it's not the tool that's shocking you!4. The tool really does not like to be used with the sanding pad and any angle other than perfectly parallel to the tool body, just like the picture shows. Once you put a slight angle to it, it dances and shutters. To do a 9' ceiling, I had to work from a step stool to keep the tool body as close as possible to parallel to the ceiling.I used it for 5 days now. Paid for itself twice compared to daily rental of $50/day in my area.

I wanted to repaint my son's bedroom, but also wanted to get rid of that dang sand that the builders sprayed on the walls to help hide any imperfections. Those bumps interfered with him wanting a few clings for the walls from various movies. So I saw this, and thought it worth a try for this price.The flex shaft to drive the sander was seriously greased, so be careful. So much that even the cardboard was discolored from grease being absorbed. It assembled easily enough (instructions are kind of poor, bad photos and such but not needed at all for assembly, it's self evident what has to go where). The rubber cover for the flex shaft's insertion point to the motor really stinks - it ripped while trying to get it over the mounting point. Really thin, poor rubber.The vacuum tube that connects to the end of the handle is a real pain to get in there as well, and once it's in, I'm not going to try to take it out. The "adapter" they give to connect to a shop vac is a joke, unless you have a miniature shop vac. I ended up doing like so many others, and using duct tape. I bent a bunch of pieces over the end of my shop vac's wand, to make the opening thinner, then this would shove in there just fine without "falling in" like it wanted to otherwise. Then I duct taped it to keep it from pulling out.All that being said - this is amazing for how much difference it makes for the dust. No dust coming off the unit's head, no dust coming out of my vacuum with a dust bag in it. So far I've done one large wall and several smaller walls with annoying angles for closets and such, and other than the edges of things (corners of walls, right up against molding, etc) it does well. Since I think most people are going to be using this *BEFORE* any moldings and such are in place, that's not going to be an issue for them. I have simply used a small powered detail finish sander for those spots, and it's amazing how much dust THAT little thing generates just doing a small couple inch wide swath. So clearly this vacuum system is doing a serious job of keeping that dust off of everything.It gets a bit awkward for the upper body muscles after a while - I just take a break, or do some of that fine work with the hand sander above the bottom moldings while the muscles I rarely use to hold things over my head relax for a bit, then go back at it.Noise levels are minimal, I didn't even bother with ear protection since even the shop vac is louder than this.Switch is easy enough to hit under the rubber seal, and the rotating speed knob is also easy to reach and if you are using that spot for a hand hold, then it's right there.I found it was easiest to use one hand by the speed switch, and the other hand to actually hold the curved metal that holds the end to the motor, and use that bar as the second handle. Gave me good leverage on everything.I took a star off since the rubber cover for the flex shaft mount was so poor, and the flex shaft and corrugated hose at the end connecting to the disc are stiff enough to make this not as flexible at the end as I'd like, so it kind of forces you to keep it at more of a flat angle to the wall, you can't pull it away as easy, so using this on a ceiling would likely damage the ceiling since the pressure would be insane on just the top edge of that disc due to the force of the flex shaft and vacuum line not giving much. That would dig some divots into the ceiling.But I'm not planning on using it on the ceiling here, so at least it won't impact me.