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Choosing an Electric Sander: Buy the Random Orbit, Then Solve the Dust

One type does most household jobs, and the cheap one is genuinely fine. A 125 mm random orbit sander is the right first tool for almost every UK DIYer, and Screwfix sell one for £24.99 that 121 buyers rate 4.6 out of 5. The money and the thought belong somewhere else entirely: getting the dust out of your lungs and off your floor.

Published 19 March 2024 · Prices and figures checked 8 September 2026 · Shopbam summarises independent testing and published specifications; we did not test these ourselves.

Four electric sander types compared by pad shape — a round random orbit pad, a rectangular quarter-sheet plate, a triangular detail plate and a belt — with the dust extraction hose picked out as the part that matters

The short answer

Decision one: buy a 125 mm random orbit sander, and buy a cheap one. Of the four types on sale in Britain, the random orbit is the only one that removes material at a useful rate and leaves a finish you can paint or varnish without going over it by hand: the pad spins and orbits at once, so it never traces the same scratch twice. Everything else is a specialist — a sheet sander for flat panels and corners, a detail sander for spindles and glazing bars, a belt sander for taking a lot off fast and for gouging your work if you pause. At the DIY end the type matters far more than the badge. Screwfix’s own-brand Titan TTB888SDR is £24.99 at 4.6 out of 5 from 121 reviews; the Makita BO5041/2 is £119.99 at 4.7 from 44. That is £95 for a tenth of a star, and both take the same 125 mm eight-hole discs at 13p each.

Decision two — and this is the one that decides whether you regret the day: the dust bag is not dust extraction. The little fabric bag or plastic microfilter box on the back of every sander in our table catches the coarse stuff and lets the fine stuff into the room. HSE are blunt about what that fine stuff is: wood dust “can cause asthma, which carpenters and joiners are four times more likely to get compared with other UK workers”, and “hardwood dust can cause cancer, particularly of the nose”. The workplace exposure limits are 3 mg/m³ for hardwood and 5 mg/m³ for softwood, both as eight-hour averages. HSE’s own line on the job you are about to do: “For very dusty jobs such as sanding, additional protection may be needed and a suitable face mask should be worn as well as using the extraction.” So: buy a sander with a real extraction port, plug it into a vacuum, and wear a mask. Every model in our table has a port. Use it.

And a decision that is not yours to make: if the paint is old, do not dry-sand it at all. UK government guidance says lead paint “was common before the 1970s and although lead paint has not been used after 1992, prior to this UK paint may have contained up to 50% lead by weight”, and that “exposure is only likely if the paint is deliberately removed or sanded during redecoration”. Sanding a pre-1992 skirting board with a £25 orbital and a bag on the back is the exact activity that guidance is warning about. Chemical stripper, or a specialist, or leave it.

Six sanders, one of each job, on the retailer's own published figures

Model and typePriceRetailerBuyer ratingDust extractionPad or belt
Titan TTB888SDR
random orbit, corded 300 W		£24.99Screwfix4.6/5 from 121Dust bag and vacuum adaptor125 mm, 2 mm orbit
Bosch PSM 100
detail / multi-sander, corded 100 W		£32.99Screwfix4.7/5 from 55Microfilter dust box102 x 102 mm delta plate
Titan TTB891SDR
quarter-sheet, corded 220 W		£19.97Screwfix4.6/5 from 51Dust bag and vacuum adaptor115 x 104 mm plate
Makita BO5041/2
random orbit, corded 300 W		£119.99Screwfix4.7/5 from 44Dust bag & extraction facility125 mm, 2.8 mm orbit
DeWalt DCW210N-XJ
random orbit, 18V brushless — bare, no battery		£119.99 (from £129.99)Screwfix4.9/5 from 203Dust bag & extraction port125 mm, 2.6 mm orbit
Makita 9911/2
belt sander, corded 640 W		£119.99Screwfix4.4/5 from 14Dust bag & extraction facility76 x 457 mm belt

Every price and rating read off the retailer’s own product page on 8 September 2026. The DeWalt is a bare tool — no battery, no charger — so it is the only price here that is not the whole cost of owning it. Toolstation cross-checks the same day: DeWalt DWE6423-GB (corded) £119.99, 491 reviews but no numeric score we could read; Makita BO5031/2 £107.99, 11 reviews — again a star graphic, so we quote the sample only; Einhell PXC 18V bare £69.99, 65 reviews. Every score in the table above carries its sample size because a score without one is not evidence — note that the two Makitas rest on 44 and 14 reviews. Amazon UK refused our fetch (robots.txt): no Amazon price appears on this page.

What each type is actually for

Random orbit — the default, and the one to buy first

The pad rotates on an offset bearing and orbits at the same time, so no grain of abrasive follows the same path twice. That is why a random orbit finish takes paint and varnish without swirl marks. Everything in the 125 mm class takes the same eight-hole hook-and-loop discs — the single most useful fact in this guide, because the consumables are interchangeable and cheap.

The spec nobody puts in the headline is orbit diameter, and it is the one that changes how the tool behaves. Titan’s £24.99 machine has a 2 mm orbit; Makita’s BO5041 has 2.8 mm; DeWalt’s cordless has 2.6 mm; Bosch’s PEX 300 AE has 4 mm. A bigger orbit takes material off faster and leaves a coarser surface for a given grit. If you are stripping a worktop, bigger is better. If you are flatting between coats, it is not.

Sheet sanders — quarter-sheet and third-sheet

A rectangular plate that vibrates in a small circle. It gets into an internal corner and sits flat on a panel without wandering. Against it: slower, and because every grain does retrace its path it leaves a faint swirl you can see under gloss. Titan’s quarter-sheet is £19.97, rated 4.6 from 51 reviews — the cheapest useful power tool in this guide. Bosch’s third-sheet PSS 250 AE is £69.99 with a 182 x 92 mm plate and 24,000 opm, but only 7 reviews: an anecdote, not evidence.

Detail sanders — the triangle

A small delta plate for spindles, glazing bars, louvre doors and staircase corners. The Bosch PSM 100 is £32.99, 100 W, a 102 x 102 mm plate at 26,000 opm, 900 g, rated 4.7 from 55 reviews. Not a substitute for a random orbit — it is what you buy second, when a job has beaten you. Bosch give it one year against Titan’s two.

Belt sanders — powerful, and easy to ruin things with

A loop of abrasive dragged over a flat platen, fast enough to dish a floorboard if you stop moving. Expert Reviews put it plainly: belt sanders are “seriously powerful” and require “skill to use”. The Makita 9911/2 is £119.99, 640 W, 2.7 kg, 75–270 m/min — but only 14 reviews. Titan’s TTB873SDR is £42.97, 900 W, 3.6 kg, 4.3 from 65 reviews. For a DIYer who needs one twice in a decade, the £43 tool with five times the review base is the more defensible buy.

The dust is the purchase, not the sander

Read the dust-extraction column in our table again. Three of the six ship with a fabric bag, two with a Bosch “microfilter” box, and the two Titans also include a vacuum adaptor in the box. That last detail is worth more than any other feature on the £24.99 machine, because a bag on the back of a sander is a courtesy, not a control measure.

The health case is HSE’s, not ours. Where hardwood and softwood dusts are mixed, the lower 3 mg/m³ hardwood limit applies to all of it. And HSE note that “settled dust contains the fine particles that are most likely to damage the lungs” — the layer you sweep up afterwards is the dangerous half, and sweeping puts it straight back in the air. Those limits are written for eight-hour shifts and nobody is inspecting your spare room; we are not pretending a Saturday on some kitchen doors carries a joiner’s lifetime risk. But they tell you what the substance is, and the mitigation is cheap: plug the sander into a vacuum, open a window, wear a mask.

What extraction actually costs

You do not need a site extractor. Any workshop wet-and-dry vacuum with a hose that fits the port moves more air than the bag. If you want the proper answer, M class is the rating for wood dust, and Screwfix list the Trend T33A, 1,200 W, 25 litre, M class, 99.9% HEPA, at £209.99 — eight times the price of the sander, which tells you where the real money in dust control sits. It carries one review, at 3 out of 5, so we quote it as a price and a specification and nothing more.

Corded or cordless, and has brushless changed the answer?

Yes, and it is the biggest change since the last version of this page. Sanding is a low-torque, long-duration job — the worst case for a battery — which is why cordless sanders used to be a novelty. Brushless motors changed the runtime arithmetic enough to make them ordinary. The evidence is in the ratings: the DeWalt DCW210N-XJ, 18V brushless, 2.6 mm orbit and 0.9 kg without a battery, is rated 4.9 out of 5 from 203 reviews — the best score and the second-largest sample on this page. Ryobi claim up to 50 minutes from a 5.0Ah battery for their 18V ONE+ RROS18, listed at £84.99 bare with a three-year guarantee on registration.

The catch is the word “bare”. The DeWalt at £119.99, the Ryobi at £84.99 and the Einhell PXC at £69.99 all arrive with no battery and no charger. If you already own batteries in that system, cordless is a straightforward win. If you do not, you are comparing a £24.99 corded tool against £70–120 plus a battery, for a job you will do standing next to a socket. Cordless if you are already in the ecosystem; corded if you are not.

The consumables trap, and where the money really goes

The tool is bought once; the abrasive is bought forever, and the sizes do not interchange between types. Random orbit discs are the cheap, standardised end: Screwfix sell a Titan 60-disc pack, 125 mm, eight-hole, ten grits from 40 to 400, for £7.99 — 13p a disc, and it fits every 125 mm machine in our table.

Sheet and detail abrasives cost three to four times as much per piece. Titan quarter-sheet sheets at 115 x 104 mm are £4.99 for 10 — 50p each; Erbauer 93 x 93 mm detail sheets are £3.89 for 10 — 39p each. Cheap enough, but they are sized to a plate, so changing brand can strand your stock.

Belts are where you get locked in. The Makita 9911 takes 76 x 457 mm; the Titan TTB873SDR takes 76 x 533 mm. Same category, same width, different loop, and no crossover. Screwfix list Titan 80-grit belts at £5.99 for five in the 457 mm size — £1.20 a belt. Check the belt length before you buy the sander, not after.

What the old version of this page said, and why we cannot show you

We would normally quote the previous version and correct it line by line, as we do on every rebuild. We could not retrieve it — repeated attempts to fetch shopbam.co.uk/choosing-the-right-electric-sander were refused by our fetching tool, and so was the Wayback Machine lookup. The slug is kept because it is indexed; the content is written from scratch.

What we can say is which 2024-era claims we have not carried over. Expert Reviews’ sander round-up (Sonakshi Khosla, updated 18 July 2024) priced the Bosch PEX 220 A at £44 and the Makita DBO180Z at £89; Bosch’s own UK site today lists the PEX 220 A at £72.16. Those figures disagree by £28 and we are not reconciling them silently — one is a 2024 street price at an unnamed retailer, the other a manufacturer’s 2026 listing. Both are recorded. Treat any sander price older than a year the same way. The other stale idea worth naming is that cordless sanders are a gimmick: in 2026 the highest-rated tool on this page, by score and by sample, is a brushless cordless one.

What the abrasives and the dust kit cost

WhatFigureWhat it means
125 mm discs, 60-pack£7.99 → 13p a discTitan, eight-hole, ten grits from 40 to 400, six of each. Screwfix, 8 Sep 2026. Fits every 125 mm machine in our table. 5/5 from 1 review — a price we trust, a rating we do not.
Quarter-sheet sheets, 10-pack£4.99 → 50p a sheetTitan, 115 x 104 mm, six-hole, mixed 40 to 180 grit, sized to the TTB891SDR plate. Screwfix, 8 Sep 2026. 4.8/5 from 4 reviews.
Detail sheets, 10-pack£3.89 → 39p a sheetErbauer, 93 x 93 mm hook-and-loop, 60/120/240 grit. Screwfix, 8 Sep 2026. 4.1/5 from 47 reviews. Check it matches your plate — detail plates are not standardised.
Sanding belts, 5-pack£5.99 → £1.20 a beltTitan 80 grit, 457 x 75 mm. Screwfix, 8 Sep 2026. 4.1/5 from 27 reviews. Fits the Makita 9911; does not fit the Titan TTB873SDR, which takes 533 mm.
M-class dust extractor£209.99Trend T33A, 1,200 W, 25 L, M class, 99.9% HEPA, 5 m hose. Screwfix, 8 Sep 2026. 3/5 from a single review. The proper answer to the dust problem — and eight times the price of the sander.
Cheapest working kit£32.98Our arithmetic, not anyone’s data: TTB888SDR at £24.99 plus the 60-disc pack at £7.99. The vacuum adaptor is already in the box; the vacuum is the one you own.
Replacement dust bagsNot pricedNo current UK listing found at Screwfix or Toolstation on 8 Sep 2026 for a replacement sander dust bag or Bosch microfilter box. On our unverified list — and another argument for using a vacuum.

Before you buy, check

Where this came from

What we could not check

  • We could not read the old version of this page. Both the live URL at shopbam.co.uk and the Wayback Machine lookup were refused by our fetching tool, so the corrections here are to 2024-era received wisdom in general, not to our own previous wording.
  • Two prices for the Bosch PEX 220 A disagree by £28. Expert Reviews said £44 in July 2024; Bosch's own UK site says £72.16 today. We have not established whether that is inflation, a promotion, or a retailer price against an RRP. Both are recorded.
  • We have no Amazon UK price for anything — their robots.txt refused our fetch — so a major UK channel is absent and the prices here may not be the cheapest available. B&Q product data would not load either, on the Ryobi kit or the Bosch PSM 200 AES.
  • Two ratings are incomplete. Toolstation show 491 reviews for the DeWalt DWE6423-GB and Ryobi 690 for the RROS18, neither with a numeric score we could read. We have the samples without the scores and have not guessed.
  • Several samples are tiny. Bosch PEX 300 AE: three reviews. Bosch PSS 250 AE: seven. Makita BO5031/2 at Toolstation: eleven. Makita 9911/2: fourteen. Trend T33A: one.
  • Nobody has tested any of these for us. Every specification is the manufacturer's or the retailer's own. We have not run a sander, measured a finish, or metered dust in a room — including for our claim that a bag is not extraction, which is an argument from HSE guidance and physics, not a bag-versus-vacuum test.
  • The HSE limits are workplace figures. 3 and 5 mg/m³ are eight-hour averages for people who do this for a living. We found no published guidance quantifying the risk of occasional domestic sanding, and we have not extrapolated one.
  • Replacement dust bags and microfilter boxes are unpriced. No current listing at Screwfix or Toolstation, so that line of the costs table is blank.
  • Detail-sander plates are not standardised and we have not confirmed the Erbauer 93 x 93 mm sheets fit the Bosch PSM 100's 102 x 102 mm plate. Treat that cost as indicative of the category, not as a compatible pairing.
  • Every price is from 8 September 2026, and at least one — the DeWalt at £119.99 against a £129.99 reference — was a promotion on the day.

Prices and specifications change constantly. Every figure here is dated — check the one in front of you before spending.