TL;DR: Add/replace oil and calibrate the gauge, but otherwise good pump.When I first received the pump and, naturally, tried to boil some water, I was utterly disappointed. It was not reaching vacuum at all, and was getting quite hot.After reading comments to similar pumps here I've tightened all joints the best I could, but it didn't help at all.The oil level was within limits, but closer to the min level. So I decided to add some. And it did the trick, the pump pulled a fairly good vacuum, the water started to boil fairly quickly, and the gauge went below -1 atm.This brings me to the other point. The gauge is not calibrated, so its reading is not accurate. Keep that in mind.Order some oil with the pump, don't expect it to be ready to go. Mine wasn't.