12.99 battery drills in rober dyas

This has really been done to death. The difference is very large indeed. In summary, your Ajo will have:

- Crap batteries

- Poor speed control

- Much lower torque

- Crap chuck

- Battery charger which will batteries quickly

They're the main points.

Didn't the advertising standards authority recently do a study and concluded Lidl cordless drills were equivalent to Bosch but far cheaper?

sPoNiX

My mistake..they compared Lidl and Bosch chainsaws.

- Crap batteries

possibly, although they were both NiCd cells, I would't be suprised if they are standard tagged cells that can be replaced.

- Poor speed control

I tried it this morning. it's got proper electronic, variable speed contol. Seems ok to my ( non expert) hands!

- Much lower torque

hmm, well I tried screwing a small woodscrew in, also you can't hold the chuck and stop it spinning. ( not that this is any test I guess ! )

- Crap chuck

maybee.. If it works I suppose I don't care though since If it breaks / slips it goes back to the shop .

- Crap batteries

possibly, although they were both NiCd cells, I would't be suprised if they are standard tagged cells that can be replaced. Both battery packs seemed to weigh the same as well (?)

- Poor speed control

I tried it this morning. it's got proper electronic, variable speed control. Seems ok to my ( non expert) hands!

- Much lower torque

hmm, well I tried screwing a small woodscrew in, also you can't hold the chuck and stop it spinning. ( not that this is any test I guess ! )

- Crap chuck

maybee.. If it works I suppose I don't care though since If it breaks / slips it goes back to the shop .

- Battery charger which will batteries quickly

It says 5 hr charge max.. although it's obviously a cheap and cheerful charger.. I don't know if batteries preffer being charged quickly or slowly anyway

All things considered I guess you get what you pay for, it suprises me that they don't put some of these points on the packaging to enable people to compare . I'm quite happy with it though, considering what it cost and what I need it for.

Their criteria for comparison were less than clear it seems.

Simon

I got a cheapie drill/driver from woollies yesterday for £9.99 - reduced from £30, I know it won't be great but it will be good to have kicking about. I can have my good drill in action and have that with a different size drill/driver bit in it. A good example is when building kitchen cabinets..... poor drill has pilot hole drill in it and the good drill has screwdriver bit.

Paul

Yes, and how much will a set of decent nicads cost? And how long will it take you to hack through the battery casing, replace the cells and glue it back together?

Try a Bosch or a Makita - still feels ok?

Now try drilling something, or screwing a bigger screw.

Your time.

Look, I don't have anything personal against crap tools - I've owned a fair few myself over the years. You asked what the differences would be.

It's more complex than that.

A drill with an electronic brake is what you need for screwing - it means the drill will stop when you take your finger off the trigger and not ruin the head of the screw.

The alternative to buying a decent drill is to upgrade your screws. I have used a lot of Spax screws with T-Star heads. They screw in easily and they look quite "arty" when left exposed! :-)

M.

The problem is that the charger will be a dumb one, and won't terminate after charging. It may seriously damage the batteries if you forget it once.

I'm using one of these (focus 10.99 drills) sort of thing, and in combination with a digital oven thermometer set to alarm when the battery hits 20C (kitchen is typically at 15C), so I can take it off charge at the right time, it works well.

As to electronic brake - I find the simple mechanical torque limiter to work just fine.

I might get the Bosch one as well anyway ( I'm like that )

;-)

Probably no different. A drill for £49 with a Bosch nametag on it is still pretty low-end.

If you really care about the differences, the last-but-one Fine Woodworking magazine had a very good multi-drill review of high and medium end drills. However the magazine itself costs half what your drill did, so maybe not!

The charger _will_ be nasty though. You can assist battery life by being careful to not leave it charging for too long.

I'm afraid not all Ni-Cads are the same. Decent quality replacements are likely to cost more than the entire drill...

I'm afraid I don't agree at all. In addition to my lovely 18v Makita, I own 2 other cordless drills. One is a 10 year old Bosch 7.2v, the other is an 8 year old 14.4V StrongArm (what nuTool used to be).

The Bosch still works. Battery life isn't what it used to be, but it's still useful. The StrongArm is all but useless, the battery capacity is next to nothing, the chuck is knackered and the forward/reverse switch doesn't stay in place.

The Bosch cost me £60 back then, which was a lot of money for me as a poor student. The StrongArm was about £20.

Simon

The cheap drills on the market can be quite adequate for occasional use, but if you are going to use them on a regular basis may not have the durability of say Makita or Bosch. We use drills of various types from SDS to Combi's day in day out, and in my experience Bosch or Makita seem to outlast everything else. We have used Dewalt in the past but find they are as unreliable as most of the cheap stuff. So if you want something that will last I would recommend you pay the extra for the Bosch.

I have found Bosch unreliable. Makita is v good. I would rather have a Wickes (made by Kress) drill any time than Bosch or DeWalt.

Seems the strong Arm was better value.

You must be in a minority, most sites I've worked on they use Bosch, Makita or Dewalt and occasionally Metabo power tools... don't think I've ever seen a Wickes drill on site.