£125 Pottery Wheel - Is It Even Usable?
I was sent a $155 VEVOR beginner’s pottery wheel to test. I’ve always wondered how good/bad these super cheap wheels are, and now I can tell you!
There’s a review/demo video here:
The short answer: Surprisingly Usable!
There are many aspects where the wheel shows it’s low cost. The quality of finish is not great (missed or messy welds), the materials feel cheap (thin metal, plastic pedal), and there are some very questionable design choices (legs are about 15cm/6” shorter than they need to be, pedal and power leads are annoyingly short). But it has good speed control, it has enough power to throw a kilo of clay, and none of the issues translate into problems with usability.
If you are a beginner and looking to get your own wheel at a fraction of the cost of a Shimpo, then this is actually a solid choice. It’s not great, you’ll outgrow it after a while, but it’s easily good enough to learn on. You could make perfectly sellable work on it (just nothing big!).
I posted about it on Instagram, and plenty of people commented with their experiences of this wheel and other cheap ones. Not all positive, but the majority were definitely pleased with them despite the issues.
When I was starting out, the advice was that cheap wheels didn’t work and would break immediately. That might have been true then, but it doesn’t seem to be the case now!
I’ve linked to ones that seem to have the same design but with longer legs, as the legs on mine were comically short. Other that that, it seems that most of their wheel have exactly the same spec (300w motor, 300rpm max)
