ToolBane

I’m 43 and a manual to me is still mandatory equipment for any legitimately sporty vehicle. More utilitarian vehicles of course and I relent especially in frequently congested traffic.

To me the load sensing...I can handle it fine but after however many years of being able to control output via the trigger...maybe it’s analogous to driving a manual transmission. The extra control is hard to let go of. I can adjust to losing it but even if the load-sensing power proves entirely superior I think it will take me many projects before I might come around and say I prefer the experience of it.

Maybe you missed this somehow but nothing in your post wasn’t already covered in HiltiWpg’s very post that you’re quoting

Something people have niggles about with the brushless model(s) is Makita’s choice to make them obligatory load-sensing. You can’t modulate the rate via the trigger at all. So a lot of people prefer to get the brushed model. I admit I kinda agree, and would have done the same had I known in the first place, but it also isn’t that terribly difficult to learn anyway.

I would go for the Makita if this was a regular-use tool (heck, mine isn’t and I went with it over the Ryobi anyway), but for very intermittent use I’m sure the Ryobi is fine.

This statement really complicates things for me because that multitool is one of two tools making me think about M12

I would like to hear some Makita noise. Even plenty happy as I am with their current selection.

Hopefully if they’re really doing a cordless router it will be a Felxvolt design (and therefore less compact than the Makita), prompting Makita to release a larger cordless router of their own. I love the Makita compact but would also like it if they had a bigger model.

Plasmas are absolutely better for quality viewing. Their limitation was casual daytime watching and lots of heat production. I actually could understand why the mass market largely went to LCD but it was a damn shame plasma couldn’t keep enough market to stick around. As far as I’m concerned my old plasma screen is gold.

As a guy that’s almost certainly never going to buy the tools in question, and will therefore never have to deal with the consequences of whatever ridiculous idea I might spout, I think “X3” might actually be kinda funky just to see. What few tools they’d explicitly want the extra voltage would probably be large enough that it wouldn’t be a huge problem fitting 3 or even 4 batteries on I would think. Table saws, lawn mowers...those kinds of things.

I like what I see but I don’t terribly regret having already picked up a “standard” BL. The way Makita shaped the body of it you can basically barrel grip it already if it feels better. That was a subtle touch that I didn’t notice before buying it that I really like. Not as much of a fan of being forced to use the electronic load-sensing though. Although you can adjust to it easily enough, I would have preferred the option to modulate via the trigger old-school style.

The Ridgid you’re thinking of is probably their new brushless Gen-5. Ridgid and Ryobi often share a lot of their tool parts and general designs, so your hopes for a new brushless Ryobi might actually be pretty good. I wouldn’t expect it to upstage the Ridgid at all, in fact most likely it will be the same motor and gearbox with a few budget-minded changes to meet a lower price-point, so its numbers will likely be close to identical.

Ryobi is more of a value brand for homeowners/DIY types so long-term compatibility makes a lot of sense. They don’t have to match the best features of the “prosumer” companies. I just picked up a couple of their 6Ah batteries and agree they’re only slightly bigger than their 3-4Ah units.

Their range of tools is too narrow for my needs. They’ve got a few solid products and if I only needed the basics or was a contractor for whom multiple platforms isn’t necessarily such an extra hinderance I might feel completely different. Some of their products are extremely price/performance-competitive. Edit: Same time, it seems there’s a lot of development overlap between them and Ryobi. Lots of tools that share lots of parts. It’s enough to make one wonder where Ridgid may be heading. In my case though that mostly meant there was little reason to consider Ridgid when Ryobi is so similar and has drastically more tools.

When buying into cordless and looking outside Dewalt for the first time, Milwaukee was naturally very high on the list of alternatives to consider. Two things threw me off compared to Makita, who I eventually went with: ambivalence about where their 18V platform is heading and not as many tools for my specific needs. The concern about 18V is probably not that big a deal but I wasn’t as sure of that a year ago. The matter of tools offered though is just what it is. What I do happens to revolve around precision woodwork and Makita happens to have more. I actually am more likely than not to pick up a couple m12 items. The soldering iron in particular, and if I’m doing that I may as well get Milwaukee’s “shameless Dremel knockoff” along the way. Both look pretty good and literally the only thing that has stopped me from getting them is HD’s online site not allowing me to order both at the same time. It seems really unlikely Makita will release such items since they appear to be largely abandoning their pod-style 12V tools.

5.0s are often cheaper even than the 4.0s. I wouldn’t kick extra into 6Ah especially with everyone expecting Makita to release more powerful batteries in the near future. 3.0s can often also be pretty inexpensive, cheaper even than the 2.0 compacts. The extra size/weight of the 3.0s aren’t a bother to me so I’m fine having that on my impact drivers and drills. For some jobs though perhaps the slimness of the 2.0s may make a big difference.

My main hobby that my tools are for is loudspeaker design. I don’t like the amount of slop I’ve accepted in a lot of my older builds. It’s one thing if it’s a deck or 2x4s that are going to be covered over with drywall for the life of your home. I want all my designs going forward to be clean to 1/64” or less. I don’t feel bad about my old designs but would have liked them to have come out more polished. A lot of my other hobbies don’t need that kind of precision though.

The first Ryobi tool I remember buying was a corded router. (I know there was something else before that but it wasn’t terribly important.) My budget at the time couldn’t justify a Dewalt for something I wasn’t sure I would use very often. Man what a godsend that tool was though. I briefly considered making Ryobi my main platform when finally investing in cordless since I am a DIY guy and don’t abuse my tools to anywhere near the degree a tradesguy will, but still passed them up for Makita for an assortment of reasons. I still ended up getting into the Ryobi platform for some of their one-off tools like the glue gun and mattress inflator. I also got their impact wrench to lend camp mates at Burning Man (don’t ask) so I don’t have to worry about my Makita units wandering off. A pair of 6Ah batteries are probably inevitable just for that one purpose.

DeWalt was my default just because it was one of my dad’s defaults growing up. The extra solidity of their tools over the other stuff he had (Ryobi and B+D) ended up dictating most of my buying decisions when I started to collect my own: where you can afford it and it makes sense go for Dewalt. For corded tools that was how I rolled. When battery tools came along frankly I avoided that moneysink as long as I could. I have a lot of hobbies including radio control models and was pretty in tune to how much batteries were going to be changing over coming years. I knew a lot of early battery platforms would prove to be temporary and not worth burning money on especially for a DIY guy who pays very close attention to longevity. Dewalt had the 18-20V thing and now this Flexvolt thing going on. The general look of it made me question how committed they were to the long-term stability of their platform vs how much they were banking on using customer loyalty to drive sales with unnecessary format changes. So I started to look elsewhere and have gone to Makita for my cordless stuff.

Well a soldering iron done up “gun style” with the battery at the base could be set down anywhere, unlike most soldering irons that need a dedicated station to sit it in between tasks. If the idea is to go cordless anyway, why have to tote a station around with you anyway? And a Dremel-style multitool...has anyone really thought about it beyond the historical norm we’re used to? I sort of like the “pencil” approach but in practice Dremels are too fat for it to have that sort of accuracy anyway. So maybe an entirely novel form factor would be worth exploring. Like a pistol grip but with the Dremel bit pointing out sideways so you always have direct view of what you’re doing.

I guess if Makita could figure out a way to make it work aesthetically then great. Form/functionwise pod-style obviously lends itself to feeling more like Dremels and soldering irons have always fit in the hand. But maybe it would be worth rethinking those things entirely. I definitely prefer the feel of the handles that the CXT line has in the hands vs their old pod-style stuff. Why not have a multitool or soldering iron completely depart from the historical cylindrical shape and go for the “gun” style? Actually...that would probably be really awesome.

That’s funny then because you’re looking at the exact same two tools I keep looking at M12 for. On more than one occasion I was trying to order but couldn’t finalize the transaction because Home Depot’s website settings refused to allow me to have them shipped. None of my current projects need them though so lately I haven’t thought about it much. User reviews on the M12 Shameless Dremel Knockoff are up and down but a decent number of people seem to indicate they like it better than Dremel’s own stuff. In theory the soldering iron having no moving parts should be really easy to get right. My plan is to just order when the need becomes more pronounced, possibly later this Summer. I would prefer it if Makita came out with their own versions of these tools but how quickly they’ve been dropping their pod-style 12-volt line since releasing CXT suggests they have no plan to develop pod-style tools in 12-volt for the foreseeable future. Interesting, typing that it occurs to me that the pending switch to larger cells may have played into Makita’s decision. Could also effect other product lines down the road particularly M12. Will probably make a worthy discussion thread at some point.

I wasn’t aware Bosch had a 12V rotary. I kinda like the idea of the M12 just because I know all my Dremel peripherals will attach to it straight away. Despite that as I’ve thought about it more I’m probably going to get Makita’s compact 18V. Already have the batteries, will have more power and can accept both the assorted 1/8” Dremel stuff and 1/4” as well. But I assume like Dewalt’s 20V that would also probably be on the large side for you...