Since manufacturers starting using some abstract number for horsepower ratings, full load amps at a given voltage is the only way to compare the power a tool puts out.
- TopamaxSurvivor
A full load amps at a given voltage has little relationship to how much power a tool puts out, as it only tells you how much power the tool
consumes. The amount of power the tool puts out depends on how efficient it handles that consumed power. Using amps to compare the power output of two tools would be like comparing how many pounds two people can lift based on how many pounds of steak each person ate before lifting!!
But as Bill points out, the amount of amps a tool consumes at full load is important to know in order to determine if your electric circuit can handle the tool, but that is the limit of its importance. To make matters even worse, I doubt if 2% of the consumers even know what amps are!!
A major problem with trying to compare similar types of tools is that I don't believe there is any widely accepted standard for measuring a tool's power output, other than possibly RPM, which isn't always relevant. The term HP became popular because it was widely used to measure the power of cars, but even there it is unreliable and has become bastardized.
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