ToolBane

Gimme

Uhh...the hyperbole here is more than a little over-the-top. You assert Dewalt is “the best out there in every single test”? Such a statement isn’t even worth bothering to research, it’s WAY too tall to be taken seriously...but as I HAVE already watched and read a LOT of tests, it’s not hard to pick up that Dewalt not only doesn’t win them all but if anything probably lags, albeit not much, behind the other members of the “Big 3” prosumer companies Makita and Milwaukee on average. Also, “no one comes close to the 60V line”? Dewalt has some great products there, certainly, some are class leaders like their worm-drive circular saw which according to a reasonable number of reviews beats out the Makita 36V hypoid, but other 60V products have reviewed rather poorly for example the plunge saw. Also, you may not be aware of this but the 60V Max (which I hope you already know is actually just 18x3=> 54V) comes at the expense of current output? A “60V Max” battery that says 9Ah only makes that in “20V Max” mode. When operating in “60V” mode it only has 3Ah. There is no free ride. The total power output available is exactly the same as Milwaukee’s High Demand battery, and is actually less than a pair of Makita’s 5Ah batteries run in X2. That’s just going to be the physics of it. None of this makes Dewalt bad either. Most of my corded tools are Dewalt. They win their share of comparison tests and even when they don’t they tend to hang around the top of the field just like the other two brands, and all three companies turn in performances that are usually pretty close to each other. It’s just more objective to reign in the enthusiasm a little.

Actually a great reason to avoid the hammer drill if you’re getting a rotary hammer anyway is there’s less to go wrong with the tool. Even with the wimpy hammer action those types of drills are taking on mechanical impacts and complexity can introduce problems over time. Why introduce risks adding an objectively watered-down features you’re never going to use especially when you have a more specialized tool anyway? The compact Makita drill I happen to have is a perfect example for this. The hammer version of this particular model has (had?) this issue where using it in hammer mode eventually causes it to get stuck in hammer mode. They’ve supposedly fixed it but broken models that people buy then return just so they get stuck back on the shelf are still floating out there. The drill is perfect for around-the-house utility otherwise, I don’t see myself needing to do any hammer drilling in the foreseeable future, ergo I went out of my way to get the non-hammer drill. Side story I got it just in time too because Makita has since increased the price of the non-hammer version some $30. Apparently the non-hammer drill is winning comparison tests so everyone’s realizing it’s a fantastic piece of kit when it doesn’t have a chintzy hammer function bringing it down. They still sell the hammer version for not even a hundred bucks and I wonder if they should just cut their losses and discontinue it for that model.

Someone needs to explain to me how this works...Kyocera can buy 80% of the shares, somehow this only applies to Asian markets, and TTI who is based in China still *actually* owns Ryobi? I actually think I would have approved more of Kyocera owning Ryobi outright. They have decades of history making quality product all over Japan. TTI...I’ve never been particularly ecstatic about.

The thick handles are almost obligatory with the pod-style batteries, and they feel cumbersome and awkward in comparison to the slick ergonomics of slide-pack batteries whether 12 or 18 volt. Makita’s older 12V that used pods have that same nuisance form-factor...looks cute in pictures but then you hold it in your hand. Makita ditching the pod-style batteries will probably prove to be the right choice for almost all the 12V tools they decide to make going forward. Pod-style is perfect for Milwaukee’s Dremel clone and soldering iron though. I guess I’ll probably get them whenever Home Despot finally has them both available for in-store pickup. They sure seem to want to avoid giving me what I want though.

There are exactly 2 things I want on the M12 lineup: the new soldering iron the shameless dremel knockoff Both are items I’m hard-pressed to see Makita offering competition for now that they’ve moved away from pod-style batteries. I don’t see anyone else doing it either. Same time there are a number of complaints about the sturdiness of the M12 “Dremel” and the soldering iron is annoying trying to get ahold of. It’s *just* irritating enough that I keep falling just shy of pulling the trigger. After that though I agree with you. M12 is solid in absolute terms, frequently much stronger than other 12V from competitors, but it gets to the point where it’s too similar to Milwaukee’s own 18V line, in which case just get the 18V which are just better with a much broader product base to boot.

Looks like they should be more than adequate for cutting steaks and drilling pilot holes for thermometers :^D

https://www.makitatools.com/products/details/SK209GDZ They like to make sexy things

SNAZZY

I wasn’t initially planning to watch all these videos but it became an option while I was otherwise watching clearcoat dry, so... I’m given to think there were some confounders going on with this particular video that could have thrown the test off. There are a lot of things that could be going on but Makita’s pulse driver getting those screws in while their own impact in particular could not suggests something funny going on. Inconsistency in the wood grain, something about the coefficient of friction between that wood to the screw surface, some sort of stiction-like property of the wood which could also change depending on where in the grain it’s going which somehow ends up being friendlier to the smooth torque pulse, or maybe the Makita impact was just defective or got screwed up from some previous work...who knows what really but that part in particular is a little hard for me to expect to be a routine result. Moving on from that, something I do speculate as to a possible reason Hitachi may not be particularly warm to their newish triple-hammer doing these types of tests is the 3:2 impact speed ratio likely also entails a 2:3 ratio in “area under the curve” impact torque. In an oversimplified analogy, it would be like saying you get 50% more impacts per second but each impact is 2/3 as substantial. No magic here, just the physics of it means there’s no free ride, like physics usually does anywhere else. If it works out as I’m speculating this could lead to a lot of “apples-to-oranges” type results much like pulse drivers but a little less obvious where the Hitachi would shine in lower-output tasks but then get blown-out in the torcher tests, and Hitachi maybe just wants to bow out of worrying about how these comparo-tests would evaluate that. Funny thing about the Oz Tool Talk 2016 video, they actually named the Makita and Hitachi the co-winners of the test. With a perfect score being 25, the Makita earned all points outright while the Hitachi scored 23 points on its own and was then given 3 “bonus points” for the IP56 rating to reach 26 points. Personal opinion...3 points seems an arbitrary number and they didn’t give Makita any freebie points for whatever protections their proprietary “Extreme Protection Technology” design features entail. No accusation of gross bias and Makita didn’t need any freebie points to garner a perfect score anyway, but at the same time it isn’t a trivial level of subjectivity being thrown in there. None of this is to say the Makita, the Hitachi, or anyone else is superior. What I’m actually saying is the results are close enough that any claims for any one product being lightyears ahead of anyone else is almost certain to prove overly-enthusiastic. I don’t remember which video it was anymore but one of them had a number of graphs where the top-3 performers were all within a few percent of each other and most of the rest of the field would be within fifteen. That’s just not going to be compelling enough for anyone to switch platforms over. All these products are moving to brushless motors with high-flux neodymium and strontium magnets with efficiencies that can reach over 90%. They all use lithium batteries sourced from the usual suspects (Sony, Sanyo, etc etc). The better brands all have pretty good impact mechanisms that aren’t going to be giving up a lot in terms of lost energy. Kinda bringing me back to my previous post, I still think the primary differentiator for better impact drivers going forward will be enhanced adjustability and control to modulate tasks that don’t require so much brute force.

With impact drivers at least I think we’re at a point where most users can be completely unworried about these things. I got a brushed XDT-11, Makita’s bare-bones brushed model, and upgraded to the ZDT-12, their brushless 4-speed uberdriver. The specs on the 12 are insanely high in the “comparisotest”, “sausage slapability” metrics but I don’t expect to come across any practical situation where that ends up being the critical difference for getting the job done. What I actually bought it for was the extra control conferred by having all those speeds. Basically the bare-bones, nowhere-near-as-powerful brushed model was still too hard to modulate with the trigger alone and the thing would brutalize smaller screws I would need to work on with more precision. I put this uberpowerful model in either of the lower two speeds and I can modulate everything I need to do with ease. That to me is worth far more than 160lbft vs 145 or whatever.

How does insurance work for this sort of thing? The fact that you didn’t lock things up may get in your way, but I would have thought you could get a substantial amount of coverage for stuff like that.

I was really impressed with some Irwin drill bits I picked up a few months ago. Wonder how those will turn out.

I sometimes wonder if they just have multiple teams of people who all just want to do impact drivers so they just have them competing against each other then put them all out on the market just cuz.

Torques any higher than this really are moving into impact wrench territory. Torture tests where people try to see if these can remove the tires off a semi may get lots of clicks but all that stuff is moving out of the realm of what these things are actually supposed to be used for. Sure in a pinch it’s nice to know if you can. Otherwise if you need impact wrench torque...buy an impact wrench.

No idea officially but the power in the battery will be the power in the battery, so this won’t “increase” power per se. They could be adding more monitoring or something that could add functionality and/or extend runtime by utilizing output more efficiently. Just a guess, though.

I’d probably only charge aftermarket batteries with aftermarket chargers. My position is probably influenced by the fact that the way my main platform Makita has their charging system set up there’s such a tight interface between battery and charger to achieve fairly aggressive charge times. All the monitoring and fans employed to allow them to do that, not something I’d expect many other manufacturers to follow with much fidelity. Bringing in an outside vendor to either end of the equation could shorten battery life, and potentially I’d be worried about things like fires and so on. My Ryobi stuff I’d probably not be anywhere near as concerned about. Any given scenario though, I’d be closely watching the first several charge cycles for rate of charge, abnormally high temps and so on, and locating them well away from anything flammable. That goes triple for any no-name stuff.

Auto-correct is a butch

Kobalt is going away? I kinda like their stuff. In principle I would have liked to see them flourish. Give Lowe’s a legit competitor to what HD has with Ryobi/Ridgid.

That makes it look like the bluetooth compatible tools actually require you to purchase it before being able to use the bluetooth. Which is a little annoying because a) they can’t just do it out of the box even though you’re paying for it, and b). that would suggest you can’t make the Bluetooth features backwards compatible with other current tools, many of which won’t likely be replaced/updated for years. Personally, I would like something that extends this functionality to any tool you feel like hooking it up to. I have the router, ORS, and plate joiner and would have really liked to have been able to enable this feature for all of them.

Here’s what I think you guys are looking for

The small size to me suggests brushless. I was hoping this would come out before I was forced to buy so now I have the current model. It performs fine but it’s also a big lumbering log. Sure would have preferred this smaller form factor.

At the risk of reopening an old discussion that got testy for no particularly good reason, these are being used for screws where you don’t need anywhere near the full impact torque of the tool. Intentionally designing the bits or their holders with a measured amount of rotational “spring” can spread out the impact energy over a slightly wider timeframe mitigating the damage all that torque being applied in a more instantaneous fashion can cause. Probably doesn’t really waste much of anything in the way of energy either.

Well I’ll ride in on the necroposting and say, X2 clones are the future of cordless. Milwaukee knows it. Only so long they can avoid it when littlest brother Ryobi already has duel-battery products and is bringing in their own 9Ah batteries to boot. I think Milwaukee would just prefer to stall a bit, not make it too obvious they’re conceding Makita had the right idea first, and maybe more importantly for them also to save face for their 28V platform and anyone that already bought into it. They’ll support 28V noncommittally until it can quietly go the wayside, then jump on the dual-battery bandwagon.

Wonder what the specs are. The ones on their current 4-speed which I just recently purchased are already out of the park. Although what I really like with it is all the speeds so it isn’t slapping every little screw through the wooden boards they’re going into. Making them smarter seems like the right direction to go with these things.