Power tool and battery choice?

[Time Waster]

I'm thinking that I need to switch from corded drill to cordless. I've got three cordless garden tools with three different brands and batteries. Time to standardise. Any recommendations?

First purchase will be a drill and a separate driver. What we get after that I don't know. Perhaps replace our strimmer, hedge trimmer, reciprocating saw. Or we might get a light lawnmower for a small lawn. Or chainsaw. However the first stage is to fix the battery system / brand then get the drill and driver from that brand.

Any recommendations or views on this?

 

[newts]

I've used DeWalt 18v for many years, very reliable batteries. 2ah batteries are OK for light DIY duties. Grinders, saws & garden tools need 4 or 5ah would be required to get a decent run time.

 

[MontyVeda]

I'm thinking that I need to switch from corded drill to cordless. I've got three cordless garden tools with three different brands and batteries. Time to standardise. Any recommendations?

First purchase will be a drill and a separate driver. What we get after that I don't know. Perhaps replace our strimmer, hedge trimmer, reciprocating saw. Or we might get a light lawnmower for a small lawn. Or chainsaw. However the first stage is to fix the battery system / brand then get the drill and driver from that brand.

Any recommendations or views on this?

If you ever need to drill into brick or stone, I'd advise keeping hold of a corded drill. They simply do it better.

 

[FrankCrank]

Watched a vid the other day on this subject

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfSLBIEsAbk


He does some well presented and entertaining stuff, seen quite a few of them. His conclusion was that the Makita was the winner.

I use only corded stuff myself. Had a few cordless drills a few years back, but as an infrequent user I don't get enough value from them before the batteries die off. Climate here doesn't help, pretty harsh on car batteries also.

 

[berty bassett]

unless you spend a lot of money and use them a lot I wouldn't bother , cheap stuff the battery won't last and expensive stuff is , well , expensive ! it is possible to buy cheaper ( not cheapest ) and put an adaptor on it to take a good brand battery but 'they 'advise not to as it damages battery - but I can't see how
most my kit is dewalt but I have a couple of ryobi things ( batteries died long time ago ) and use an adaptor with no issue apart from it looks naff - the angle grinder works better than it ever did with the proper battery in it

 

[Tim Bennet.]

Most of my tools are Bosch 18v and have been great (except for niggling little design details). But the drills are big and heavy, so on impulse I bought a small 12v drill from Aldi. Apart from a rather basic chuck mechanism, it has been a delight and I've found myself using it more and more. Five or six years on, the batteries are still fine.

 

[Jameshow]

Most of my tools are Bosch 18v and have been great (except for niggling little design details). But the drills are big and heavy, so on impulse I bought a small 12v drill from Aldi. Apart from a rather basic chuck mechanism, it has been a delight and I've found myself using it more and more. Five or six years on, the batteries are still fine.

I have one of the MacAlister ones and brought my dad a bauker one off eBay. Both great little drills.

 

[si_c]

I've gone for Makita, it was the combination of excellent quality plus having lots of garden tools in their range, wait for the drill/impact driver to be on sale with a charger, then you can buy the bare tools separately as you need them. A drill without battery can cost as little as £50 for a good quality unit. DeWalt do great drills and pro tools, but don't have the garden range unfortunately, hence my choice, plus I prefer the colour to Milwaukee. Erbauer seem OK, it's Screwfix/B&Q own brand stuff, so may suffer if they kill the brand. At least with the bigger pro tool suppliers you're likely to see product support for some time, same with MacAllister, tool quality is OK, but it's an own brand, fine for 240v but if you want to replace a battery later, not so sure.

The hammer action on them is OK, they do get through brick or blockwork easily enough, but if you find yourself needing to drill into lintels over windows or anything hardened then you'll need an SDS drill, but even a corded hammer action drill will struggle. I borrowed my Dads 20yo Bosch 240v unit to drill into the chimney breast, but even it struggled, where a more powerful SDS just went through it easily.

The battery quality on the likes of Makita/DeWalt is incredible, for example my Dad has a 4ah battery for his strimmer, he gets 15 minutes of use out of it then has to charge for 2 hours, where the 5Ah for the Makita I have gets over an hour, and takes 45mins to charge. If you do use tools a lot it's worth getting a second battery, just to save on the hassle of swapping, but you can get by easily with a single one.

Wait for a good combo deal, Screwfix/ITS/Toolstation periodically have drills/impact driver sets with a charger and at least one battery on sale, usually one or the other will have what you want, just price dependent.

Edit: We've been renovating our house for the last year or so, and all our tools have seen a lot of use and I'm not overly kind to them, no problems being bashed around at all.

 

[Alex321]

I'm thinking that I need to switch from corded drill to cordless.

Why?

Knowing the reason may make a difference to recommendations.

Though I won't have any recommendations personally, because I don't use any cordless tools apart from my electric screwdriver.

 

[si_c]

Why?

Knowing the reason may make a difference to recommendations.

Though I won't have any recommendations personally, because I don't use any cordless tools apart from my electric screwdriver.

Cordless does make life a lot easier, i've got quite a lot of corded tools and whilst they are cheaper, they can be annoying to use once you've got used to cordless ones. It doesn't matter so much with tools like saws where you use them in one place and ahving a cord doesn't really matter but for drills etc, it does.

That being said, I wouldn't replace corded units with cordless ones unless they broke, but if they are at end of life or portability is a concern then considering which ecosystem you buy into is probably not a bad idea, it's better to stick with one tool brand and charger by far.

 

[Electric_Andy]

Firstly I'd have a look at all of the "bare unit only" prices of the specific brands, to see if they all do the tools you need and at what price. It's annoying having all the gear for a brand, only to find they don't do the bare unit you're after. I have gone with DeWalt for the past few years (after having some cheap corded stuff which does the job but the wires are annoying).

Secondly I'd also consider that DeWalt are now following the US market and switching to 20v instead of 18v. I've seen a lot of good deals as a consequence of that i.e. their 18v combi drill bare unit being sold new for £68. Me and my Dad have had DeWalt 18v batteries for years and they show no signs of failure or capacity degredation. I'd be confident if I bought a couple of 5aH 18v batteries now, they would last 10 years if taken care of (i.e. not leaving them flat for months on end). But make of that what you will....some would be nervous about investing in gear that is soon to be redundant (even though I expect there would be lots of new old stock and/or 2nd hand for sale in future) whereas some would see it as a good time to save some money.

Thirdly, in my experience the brand is not that important if you get Bosch pro/DeWalt/Makita/Milwaukee. The latter usually comes out on top in tests but has a price tag to match. A lot of it is preference and trust based on anecdotal evidence. For the actual testing (look at "Project Farm" on YouTube), there are slight differences in performance but I'm not fussed about performing a task 2 seconds quicker if it's going to cost me £100 more per tool to do it. Also some US "shop" brands don't do a bad job either, but I feel the market over here isn't as wide...most cheap stuff found on websites will do the job but cannot touch the big 4/5 brands.

Lastly, and pertaining to the above, I find the tool accesories are more of a factor than the actual tool. Sand papers, drill bits, driver bits, blades etc are all widely available at various price points. I've used the cheapest sanding discs I could find and they were fine, but things like bits and blades you do get what you pay for. And of course most are universal, meaning that if a cheap box of accesories does the job then you can save money there. Or if you want to buy the branded versions you still can. But the accessory is still at the coal face and often that's the weaker link