New electric drill - recommendations please :)

If you're serious about drilling masonry, you need an SDS drill - hammer is a waste of time. Then you can buy a cheap and cheerful non hammer drill for everything else.

Sounds like you need as SDS drill, which can also do chiselling. SCrewfix do a Makita for around £120. Argos do a good Bosch for £99. For a simple general purpose drill to accompany the SDS, buy a £13-15 cheapo from Argos, B&Q, etc. Once you have an SDS you will never look back.

Also see the current thread on the JCB SDS drill.

Before this thread get absorbed into the JCB SDS drill thread, I am not that rich!!! can't afford two drills!!! (her indoors won't accept that either!!!)

Masonry is not my primary target! mainly plastic (I make things out of perspex/PVC) and wood...

If you are thinking of buying a Makita, you could afford two cheap drills. If I had any masonry work to do at all, I'd prefer a 29.99 NuTool to the most expensive standard hammer on the market. Add a 20 quid hammer drill with reverse and trigger control and you're laughing. Why pay more? (Unless you are in the trade, so could benefit from something that will provide better duty cycles before giving in). As wood and plastic are such easy materials to work with, the 20 quid drill would surely be fine.

Christian.

IMHO if you want an accurate drill for this sort of thing you need to stay clear of using it on masonry ever - it knackers the bearings more quickly.

It's a fact of life that no general purpose tool will be as good as those made specifically for the job.