PPPro 18V drill - short review

[IMM]

Have you used the Wickes?

[IMM]

It had a key you turn.

[IMM]

It is normally about £50, with "one" battery, so not a cheap and nasty affair. Wickes don't sell crap power tools. An extra battery may take the price up to £70.

[mike]

Grunff,

May not be what you're looking for since it doesn't hammer, but Wickes have cut the price of the 15.6V Kress ABS156 from £125 to £75 (this isn't the non-Kress 14.4 hammer at £75). Bought one of these a few weeks ago and it got sustained and heavy use for a fortnight. Turned out to be a really nice piece of kit. The automatic spindle lock's one of those features you don't want to be without once you've used it. Felt the battery life could be better but as I say it was really getting some stick, and the spare and 1-hr charger got round that. There's a magazine review of it on Kress's website.

Incidentally, at the cheapie end, there's a decent 14.4V 1.7Ah drill driver kicking around under various names. I got the PPPro screw gun version with two batteries (no chuck) for £40, and the DP Tools rebadged drill version from Focus (bundled with a clone of the PPPro Rotozip) for £40 the pair. There's no variable speed on the DP version (contrary to what it says in the instructions) but it's pretty nifty at whacking in big screws. The Champion version from Focus is another variation and I think they've just knocked twenty quid off the price. Dunno who makes it but it's the one with the slide battery pack so may be a different manufacturer to the other PPPro drills - certainly feels better than the 18volters I fondled in the local branch.

Mike

[Grunff]

Thanks for your thoughts Mike. Unfortunately, cordless hammer is something which I really do need; there are some occasions when I can't trail a lead to use my SDS.

I ordered the Axminster 24V White.

It arrived today, and is going back tomorrow. I'm really disappointed with the overall quality. The gear selector is very sloppy, there's huge amounts of play in the torque selector, the forward/reverse switch doesn't have nicely defined positions, etc.

It actually makes the PPPro tool look really good in comparison! The only thing it has over the PPPro is a good speed controller.

After my disappointment, I realised that I was being silly - I'd completely overlooked Bosch. This is particularly odd since most of my power tools are Bosch.

B&Q are currently doing the Bosch PSB24VE at £95, which sounds like a pretty good deal to me. I know a lot of people here don't rate the Bosch green range, but I have quite a few tools out of that range, all of which get used regularly, and I've yet to have a problem.

[Martin Angove]

I have recently taken delivery of an 18V White cordless - exactly the opposite problem - the gearbox selector is stiffer than... well... a stiff thing. Even if you try to follow the instructions to "rotate the chuck a little so that the gears line up". However, apart from that it appears reasonable so far, and was within the budget. I nearly went for a non-hammer 12V Makita having used a few in the past and been impressed, but tbh I'm going to need the cordless hammer too often.

Hwyl!

M.

[IMM]

A cordless SDS and a 12v drill/driver is the best option, if mains are not available.