Hey guys. I did do a lot of reading, research online, in mags, in stores etc.
I am not biased for any of the saws, although I am sort of biased against Dewalt as I don't care for most of their tools. I own maybe 6 -7 of thier tools.
I own primarily Bosch, Hitachi, Porter Cable, Milwaukee, Hilti, some Panasonic and Makita, and a wide variety of other brands that I bought for one reason or another believing it was the best tool in its class at the time of purchase.
Having said all that, I narrowed my choice down to the Bosch (which my heart wanted) and the Makita. The Hitachi was ruled out kpretty fast based on some reviews I read, and by my giving it a dry run in the store. It took a hard push and had some wobble and flimsyness that was excessive for my liking. And it had alot of plastic. I ended up going with the Makita over the Bosch because of accuracy and smoothness of travel.
The Makita is easily the smoothest, and because of the ever-so-slight wobble in the blade of the Bosch due to the arbor design, I passed on it.
My new 12" Makita supplements my old tried and true 10" Makita and an 8" red Makita cheapo I bought years ago as my first miter saw. So you might think I only buy Makita miters saws, but the 8" was a impulse buy, the 10" was a reconditioned deal too good to pass up that replaced the Delta that had gotten swiped out of my truck at the lunber yard while I was in the middle of a job and had to have a replacement fast. It was what they had in stock so I bought. It was an okay saw. Still is. But it won‘t see much use after using this new 12“. It is s-o- s-m-o-o-t-h!
So anyway, when it came down to my latest purchase I was really wanting the Bosch, but research is what led me to buy a Makita this time, not the lack of it like the first two times.
The only negative I can give the Makita is that the miter scale is located on the upper right side of the table and takes a little getting used to. In fact, when I first started using it I thought "Shucks I hope I didn't under-estimate the inconvenience of that" as I had read about it in some reviews of the saw on Amazon (where I ended up buying it from) but I quickly got used to it and now it's not even a hinderance at all.
Now if we could just get one saw with the up-front controls like the Bosch, the rail and ball bearing system on the Makita, and the Green Hitachi (the old light green not that ugly new green) we’d be in fat city. BTW, the Makita does also have some up-front controls it’s just that the scales and tensioner for the bevel cut is in the back.
Hope that helps.
P.S. you want to talk portable 10” table saws. Don’t even read the reviews just go get the Bosch.