I haven't read anything yet that would make me discount the ryobi stuff yet. You've painted a good picture. I do have a hitatchi sds hammer drill at the moment but is a bit heavy for light-weight drilling. (shoulder's hurting)
I'd mostly use any new drill I buy on the percussion setting, although would occasionally use the hammer but for anything meaty, i'd revert to the hitatchi.
I'd be using it daily for tasks like drilling metal boxes and mounting panels / control boxes on to block work.
Thanks everyone for your replies - keep it coming :)
Thanks Jim - It's not my first drill - I've been coping with a ferm drill for a while - It worked well at first but has only lasted a year. It's ready for binning now. I want one for daily use for light to medium weight drilling (very occasional hammer - when I can't be bothered to get my sds hammer drill out!)
If I was to opt for the ryobi drill at twice the price of my old drill, I'd expect it to last at least twice as long.
Bought one in Homebase today. 18v. 2 1.7Ah batteries. 1 hr charger. Carrying case. £79.99 - but being Homebase 10% off day it cost just a shade over £70. It's this one:
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*** DO NOT BUY THIS FROM ARGOS! ***
Instead, buy it from Homebase. They've got a special offer on at the moment (at least, Homebase in Bracknell have), buy a Worx tool costing more than £50 and they throw in a completely free workbench. They reckon the workbench is worth £50 but that's possibly debatable - I reckon £30-ish if you were to shop around (however, Homebase are selling the workbench as a separate item for £49.99 so maybe it is a valid price).
The workbench is similar to a traditional B&D Workmate in design, but the top platform can be angled - could be very handy for some jobs. The top platform can also be raised and lowered to different heights off the ground. The workbench is pretty sturdy and took me minutes to put together this afternoon. Even if you weren't looking for a workbench it would make someone a really nice Xmas pressie - or you could donate it to a charity for use as a tombola prize or something. It's not crap IMHO.
And I used the drill this afternoon for a short time. Not a bad piece of kit, feels fairly sturdy. I think it came with a 3 yr guarantee (need to check that....).
Why this fetish for buying a cheap drill good enough for limited DIY use, but insisting on a fast charger?
Like for like, the faster you charge the batteries, the less time they will last. And more so with poor cells - which is one of the main problems with cheap power tools.
If you buy a proper branded product at a decent price from a manufacturer with spares and service backup you can expect and get a good quality product with the ability to get it fixed if and when it fails. Also, in the context of consumer legislation, if you have bought a good quality product then you can reasonably and effectively squeeze the retailer to replace it in case of early failure.
The low end and OEM manufacturers operate to a different principle because their products are sold through volume distribution outlets such as B&Q. The retailers do not want to implement any form of customer service, spares or repair but only to shift boxes - it doesn't fit their business model and would cost them money. They also know that because the products are low end, a significant proportion of would-be customers won't buy them because they are unknown, there is little or no backup and that a customer would likely not do well if trying to invoke consumer legislation. To get around this, they offer a three year warranty, serviced by exchange and push the returns back to the supplier. The implication is that after the warranty has expired, there is no further backup, so in effect, the tool should be considered as written off and living on borrowed time after that.
Interestingly, the branded manufacturers are now also starting to offer three year warranties, partly to compete with this but also on the basis of continued spares availabilitiy, service and quality. The higher reliability means that they can do this at little cost and also have an opportunity to gain visibility into the customer base through returned warranty registration cards. In effect this is removing any perceived advantage offered by the low end suppliers with the advantages of better products and better service.
It really becomes a question of which factors are most important to you
They can be
- quality and performance of the product
- ease and comfort of use
- total cost of ownership over the anticipated product lifetime
- initial purchase price
- availability of spares and service (usually inherent from first three)
Personally, I set my criteria in the order above. I can understand if people want to set initial purchase price as their most important purchase criterion, but it is naive to do so without at least considering most or all of the others.
This is one of the OEM manufacturer's ploys - the same as having higher voltages. I think it was Screwfix who was recently offering a 32v drill at £32 with a slogan of £1 per volt. Of course, that is all that it is - a slogan.
Battery quality is one of the main factors in cordless tools and one of the main cost factors also. Hence the Panasonic 15.6v products bening able to easily outperform other manufacturer's 18v offerings.
Considering the low end, the batteries are so poor and have such limited capacity, that the only way to achieve any degree of acceptability is to fast charge them. it also adds an additional marketing ploy that they can claim a fast charger. Is the charger designed with all of the electronics necessary to correctly charge the batteries and preserve their lifetime? Of course not.
Fortunately for them, there are enough gullible people around to buy these offerings along with their National Lottery tickets.
Yup. As well as a decent cordless drill, I've got a PP one. 18 volt. Good enough to take where it might get stolen. When the first battery died, I altered the charger to a 14 hour type, and bought a new battery. Then re-celled the old one with decent (Sanyo) cells.
I doubt many who only use cheap tools would believe the difference in performance between the two battery types. The starting torque is miles better and easier controlled.
Retail, the batteries would have cost more than a new drill. But it doesn't require a genius to figure out why.
Do you have any reliable information to support that claim?
I'm not saying you are wrong, and indeed it's entirely possible that you are right. But it would carry a lot more conviction if there were supporting evidence that the jury could convict on.
Regarding batteries - it is possible to get batteries that are designed to tolerate fast charging without damage or degradation. Unsurprisingly, these cost more.
Fast charging implies (or should imply) implementing good quality chargers to look at battery voltage and or temperature.
NiCd and NiMH batteries can both be charged using the Delta V method which involves monitoring the battery voltage very accurately to detect the small voltage drop that occurs just after peak charge and to stop the charging. With NiMH, the drop is about 2mV per cell, so implementing chargers is not easy.
The other approach is to use detection of cell temperature as well and to stop when the temperature starts to rise, which it will significantly at the end of charge.
Another interesting approach is that by Rayovac who have cells with charge control circuits built into the cells.
I suspect that with the advent of cheap, single chip, fast charger ICs it's just as cheap, if not cheaper to provide a proper, 'intelligent' fast charger as it is to supply a 'unintelligent' one.
I'm almost tempted to take apart the charger from my cheapo, generic, cordless lopper to see if it does have an intelligent charger. It certainly acts like it has one.
It's trivially easy with a ready made chip that does all the hard work for you. They can be bought 'off the shelf' now. One off price is only a dollar or two and I'm pretty sure they'd be a lot cheaper in quantity. The most well known manufacturer is Dallas/Maxim.
Only my own experience based on using re-chargeables every day in connection with work. Even with a decent intelligent charger, both Ni-Cad and NiMH have a longer life if charged at the 14 hour rate. This is with good quality cells.
I looked at the instruction manual for a $25 drill during a recent trip to the U.S. It came with a claimed one hour charger. The instructions told the user to make sure that the battery was discharged before recharging and then to charge for no more than an hour to avoid overheating the batteries and damaging them. Presumably they had a safety vent to at least avoid their exploding if the user forgot.
Some products may and some may not. The main point is that if fast charging is going to be done, then battery life is substantially shortened if the batteries are not designed for fast charge behaviour.
However, consider the impact of a dollar or two on the costs and margins for a Chinese factory making a power tool that will end up in B&Q for a few tens of pounds. The ex-works price is probably around £10-15 tops so anything that does not need to be there is likely to be left out. Every cent counts.
The game is not quality, it is of meeting a minimal price and a minimal spec. and having an acceptably low return rate within the intended warranty period.
If usage is low enough, then with cheap batteries and a crappy charger circuit, these parameters can be met simply because the battery will not be subjected to that many recharges during the warranty period. After that the retailer doesn't care. They would rather have the marketing ploy of fast charge because that sells product.
The retailers are taking a reasonable gamble that a large proportion of the customers will not be discerning, will have low usage rates, sling the tool when it breaks and probably have lost the receipt anyway.
I'm not at all convinced that's true. A proper delta/V fast charger will do what's required with any NiCd or NiMh bttery.
Of course better batteries will always be better batteries. But does "designing for fast charging" necessarily cost more? In the (distantly related) case of car batteries the ones designed for fast charging are actually a lot cheaper.
I knew you were going to say that which is why I added the bit about "they'd be a lot cheaper in quantity".
Yes, and what I was saying is that the chips are now so cheap that it'll be no more expensive to produce tools with 'intelligent' fast chargers and you'd get a gain in reduced returns etc.
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