Battery drill drivers

Sep 18, 2016 14 Replies

I'm about to buy another drill driver, save on messing about swapping bits etc.



Currently have a Screwfix LiIon Titan, sub £50 I find it OK bar a few minor issues It's not well balanced, put it down on the battery and it will often topple, sick of leaving pozi shaped dints in stuff. And where a lot of torque is required it will just give up and die.



Are the more expensive,branded stuff any/much better?


I really like my Titan 10.8 volt driver. I also have a big, relatively expensive, Metabo but most of the time I use the Titan. The Metabo only gets used when I need to drive big screws (like 6 x 120).

Yes, different world entirely. Makita or Hitachi.

I have never had trouble with the lithium battery version from Aldi

It may be partly a function of the size and weight of the battery, but I have always found my 18V Makita stuff to be very stable on its base (unless you have something very heavy like a large hole saw in the chuck). My 18.8V Makita kit however is not designed to stand on its base at all - so you have to pout them down on their sides.

+1 for Makita (no personal experience of Hitachi)

+1 for Hitachi Ive had a pair for nearly two years now and very pleased with them.

I have a Hitachi which is still working after several years, with the exception of the battery, which died, so I replaced it with a Fluoreon one (misspelled on the case as Floureon) which I suspect has outlived the original. I must buy another.

I have a Hitachi 18v SDS & a 18v drill driver, both have the (sometimes annoying) feature of stopping dead when the battery goes below a certain level, and I mean dead - it makes you think something has broken :-)

Most LiIon tools do that - once the battery monitoring logic decides its time to stop, they do. My 10.8V Makita kit does the same.

Just got a pair of Floureon 14.4 NiCads for Makita impact screwdriver, they seem to be fine. I have had a couple of Floureon Li-Ion jump starters for a year or more.

I've just ordered a Floureon 18V 3Ah NiMH battery for my Makita combi. Reviews are a bit mixed so I'll just hope. It was prompted by this thread and also by my useful green Bosch 7.2V drill snuffing it at almost exactly 19 years old. I get annoyed with some jobs with only 3 drills as there's too much swapping of bits.

They're all keyless chucks, but hex ends are OK for countersinks and drivers but too wobbly for drill bits. My good countersinks are round; the hex. ones hardly work - I've a set of decent hex. ones being delivered soon.

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