Einhell TP-RO 18 Li BL Router Review – UK Tried & Tested

I used this to cut a stopped groove for a bookshelf back panel and mill a clean circle into a scrap board for a bird feeder platform, and both jobs went through cleanly. Before either of those, I checked exactly what was in the box, because this one caught me out on the naming. The listing just says TP-RO 18 Li BL, same as the two-attachment version, but what turns up depends on which specific listing you buy from. Mine came with the router attachment only, no edge attachment included, and I’d worked that out before ordering rather than after by checking the box contents on the exact listing rather than trusting the title.

That distinction is worth sorting before you buy rather than after. If you want the edge attachment too, it’s a separate purchase, and it isn’t always easy to find listed on its own once you’ve already got the router. Worth checking that before assuming you can add it on whenever you fancy.

Overview and first impressions

The collet took a bit of care too. Mine came with a 6mm and an 8mm collet, plus a 1/4in sleeve. The sleeve is what lets a 1/4in shank seat properly inside the 6mm collet, it isn’t a separate 1/4in collet in its own right, and forcing a 1/4in bit straight in without it means it never tightens properly.

If a bit that’s genuinely the right size still won’t seat, that’s not always something you’ve done wrong either. Some units have shipped with a collet that’s just slightly out, tight enough to reject a bit that measures correctly on the bench. I’ve heard of at least one case where that happened and the buyer got no useful response after flagging it, video evidence and all. Worth raising it with wherever you bought it rather than assuming user error and living with it, and worth checking a spare bit of known good size before deciding the collet itself is at fault.

I checked what I’d be working with. The router attachment is the part you’re guaranteed on this listing regardless of naming. It gives 35mm of stroke, plenty for the groove and the circle both, and it’s built around an aluminium construction rather than anything that flexes under load.

I wound the depth in for the groove. It runs off a multi-stage turret stop, infinitely adjustable with a fine setting on top for landing exactly where you want. Mine felt a touch stiffer to move than I’d like, more effort than it should really take to wind through, and I wasn’t the only one to notice it, another buyer flagged the exact same stiffness independently. It still holds a preset depth solidly enough once it’s there, the resistance is in moving it, not in it drifting afterward.

I felt a precise twin-tube guide, two rails rather than one, keeping the motor square through the groove rather than letting it rock under pressure. Push hard on a deep pass, though, and there’s a small amount of play in those columns, the same mechanism that gives the smooth guided feel showing a slight looseness once it’s really loaded up. Nothing that showed up on my groove specifically, but worth knowing if a job’s going to lean on it harder than a shallow pass does.

I ran the speed dial up for the oak groove. It stretches from around 10,000 up to 30,000rpm, a wide enough range that a setting for fine detail and a setting for clearing material fast are both genuinely available rather than one end of the dial being wasted.

I’d half expected the oak to make it labour a bit. I’d heard this size of router can hit real limits in hardwood, tested against pricier rivals it came up short on power specifically, and I went in braced for that. It proved me wrong on my groove, no struggling, no need to reach for anything corded to finish the job. Both things can be true. A router that shows a limit against sharper competition in a controlled test can still feel entirely capable on an actual job in oak, since falling short of the best in class and struggling to do the work are different findings, and only the first one matched what I read going in.

Specifications and scores

How it performed in our tests

I swapped bits between the two jobs. It goes through a spindle lock, no second wrench needed. Press the power switch briefly, adjust the depth stop with the release and lock button, wind the depth down to where you want it, then tighten the locking nut and secure the collet. Do that out of order and you’re starting again, since the release mechanism and the depth stop genuinely fight each other if you skip a step.

Worth checking a bit’s cutting width against the 30mm rating it’s built for before fitting it, since that’s the actual cutting diameter rather than the shank size, and it’s the figure that decides whether a bit spins safely in the opening.

The copy ring gave me more trouble fitting than anything else on the tool. Once it’s seated it works fine for template guided cuts, but getting it settled correctly first time took more fiddling than I expected. Doesn’t affect freehand routing at all, only matters if a template’s involved.

Battery system and runtime

I weighed it against a couple of other routers I own out of curiosity. It comes in at 1.34kg, and that figure holds consistent everywhere I’ve checked it, Einhell’s own numbers and more than one independent seller all agree. There’s one listing out there with a completely different figure and some other numbers on the same page that are obviously wrong too, so I’d trust the consistent number over the odd one out every time.

I ran it alongside other tools that day. Noise comes in at 91.4dB(A) sound power and 80.4dB(A) sound pressure, both with a small uncertainty margin either way. Nothing alarming, worth having if you’re already tracking exposure across other tools on the same job.

Performance and limitations

I hooked up the dust extraction for the groove. It runs through a 35mm adaptor fitting Einhell’s own wet and dry vacs as well as plenty of others beyond that. It’s there, and it works, but it falls a bit short of properly containing everything on a longer pass, worth wearing a mask for anything sustained rather than relying on the extraction alone.

I reached for the compass tip on the bird feeder platform. It earned its keep, milling a clean circle rather than trying to freehand it. Specific inclusion rather than a generic one, worth knowing about if curved or circular work comes up in what you do.

I gripped it through the groove cut and felt the two handed design keep things under control. The handle itself is a soft grip material, which mattered on a cut that needed to stay dead straight along the back panel. The plastic base plate insert held up without a mark through both jobs, no scratching on the workpiece side despite two lots of chips going everywhere.

I registered it the evening it arrived, receipt and serial number both still to hand, rather than risk missing the 30 day window. Miss it and cover drops back to one year instead of three, and the brushless motor’s own separate ten year cover needs the same registration. Worth doing it straight away rather than risking two years of cover to forgetting.

Noticing it never once seemed to flag on power through either job, that’s down to the brushless motor rather than luck. A brushed motor wears its own brushes down and loses output gradually. This one holds its output steady across its working life, which is the actual mechanism behind both the extra power and the longer runtime, not two separate features but one design choice doing both jobs.

Most of what I’ve read from other buyers lines up with my own two jobs rather than contradicting them. People pick this up for DIY and hobby scale work rather than daily trade use, plenty of them as a first router rather than an addition to a set they already run, and most come away happy. The aggregate rating across the sources I checked sits around 4.7 out of 5 from several hundred combined ratings, which matches what I’d expect given how straightforward both my jobs turned out once the collet and the naming were sorted.

Final verdict, is it worth it

I finished both jobs, the bookshelf groove and the bird feeder circle, and it did what I needed and the couple of things worth knowing, the collet, the depth stiffness, which listing actually gets you which attachment, are all things you can plan around rather than discover the hard way. Sort those out before you buy and it’s a solid router for the price, especially if this is a first one rather than an addition to a set you’re already running.