Make: Online : Selecting your next cordless drill

Selecting your next cordless drill

Charles writes - "We recently had to replace a cordless drill and had a heck of a time plowing through all the specs to figure out what diffrentiates the 40+ drills you can get at Home Depot alone. When were were done, we wrote it all up for our blog, Toolmonger, and included the spreadsheet with the specs on 113 different drills. We thought other Makers are bound to run into this problem and might find the article useful." - Link.

Comments

Oldest comments listed first.

Posted by: fxer on May 19, 2006 at 10:00 AM

Pretty interesting article, I'm in the market myself, what drills make/model are Makers 'round these parts using?

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Posted by: xxxxxxxxxxxx on May 20, 2006 at 9:12 AM

Bigger is not always better. If you intend to use the drill all day long a less powerful but lighter drill will be much kinder to your body. I used an 18 volt Ridgid drill to install drywall in two houses and I will probably have problems with my elbow for the rest of my life because of this. How heavy the drill feels in the store is not a good indication of how it will feel at the end of the day on the job site.

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Posted by: rbelcher on July 26, 2009 at 12:37 PM

Lighter Drills

A significant amount of the weight of a cordless drill is due to the batteries. Luckily, batteries are getting better at fast clip now. Look for the newer compact Lithium-ion batteries that several manufacturers have out now.

Of course, when it comes to the drill itself, heavier is probably going to be better. Low weight, low cost, high strength: pick two. Except, I don't know of any cordless drills made out of "exotic metals."

There's more information here: http://www.bestcordlessdrill.net

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Posted by: Steve on January 7, 2008 at 6:51 AM

The best cordless drill I have ever bought is the Dewalt DC759KA, it has lots of power and will drill anything I can think of.

cheers
Steve

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