Why are small impact driver no longer available/popular?

[Chris Green]

I have a couple of 'twin pack' 10.8v cordless drill and impact driver sets which share batteries etc. One is a Titan (Screwfix) and the other is a Duratool (CPC own brand).

Anyway I find them both very useful as the drill makes holes and the impact driver puts screws into them. :-) I have three batteries for each.

However the Titan ones are beginning to show their age and the CPC drill doesn't have an auto-lock chuck so I'm looking for replacements. However it seems that impact drivers no longer exist! There's ones with 1/2" chucks for use with socket spanners but there seems to be nothing for 1/4" hex bits. I find my existing 10.8v ones quite capable of driving 100 x 6mm screws into fence posts and such so I see no need for anything more powerful.

Am I missing something or have these really gone out of fashion?

[Theo]

12v is the new 10.8v (literally the same thing, just renamed).

Makita have 3:

Milwaukee have 4: Dewalt has 1: Bosch has 3: etc etc

Screwfix have 57 versions listed:

although half of those are impact wrenches. (The right-angle 12V wrenches are very popular with mechanics for car bolts.)

Theo

[Soup]

IQ test 10.8V is to 12V as 18V is to ?? a) 6V b) 100V c) 20V

Guess 10.8V impacts are called 12V impacts now.

Typical, manufacturers 'telling' you are getting more, when it is exactly the same.

[Andy Burns]

I have a few of the previous generation tools using makita BL1013 batteries, much less bulky than CXT or LXT when you don't need brute force

[Chris Green]

Yes, I had realised that, though quite a few of them are now not slim like the old nominally 10.8v ones were.

More than half I think! :-) I could only spot a couple of 1/4" hex drive ones. Even those don't show whether they have compact batteries or not. I just want a nice slim handle without a mushroom on the end.

There's also no cheap ones, e.g. Titan or similar brands. I now have a (lovely) Parkside 12v drill/driver but there's no matching impact wrench to go with it.

[Chris Green]

Exactly!!! I want a slim-handled impact driver for wood screws that pairs nicely with a 12v cordless drill.

[Chris Green]

This (as I said above) isn't my issue, I know that 12v is equivalent to 10.8v. What I am spcifically after is cordless tools with a slim handle, i.e. without that horrible mushroom on the end. Many of the latest generation 12v (was 10.8v) tools don't have the slim format I'm after. There *are* 12v cordless drill/drivers with slim batteries (I have a couple) but I can't find an 12v impact driver with a slim handle (not at a sensible price anyway, I don't want to pay over £100 for tool + battery + charger).

[Soup]

On re-reading the only allusion you make to tools using more power is to say the 'current' tools are powerfull enough. However you say nothing about the shape of the tool handles/batteries

[John Rumm]

Bosch still do one like that:

[Chris Green]

Not cheap though at £190! It is exactly what I'm looking for though, to make sense I'd have to buy a matching cordless drill/driver which I suspect would make the whole deal very expensive.

[John Rumm]

Remember that includes the charger and two batts - so it is the foundation of a system, and you can add further tools "body only". So something like:

get you the DD (there are other "ends" you can add to that to make a hammer drill, or offset drill etc.

If you can still find someone with stock, then a kit like:

might be a better deal. That is the kit I have and I have found it very good for light weight jobs. (the only slight down side is the batts are only 1.3 Ah)

[Chris Green]

Yes, but one needs at least one more battery than tools, i.e. for an impact driver and a drill one needs three batteries.

My Parkside 12v cordless driver plus charger plus two batteries was only 69 Euros.

Yes, that's the sort of set I have in Titan and Duratool. It's ridiculous that it has been 'superseded' by a set with clumsy mushroom lumps on the ends of the handles.

Thanks for all your feedback.

[John Rumm]

Extra £40 for another battery...

You pays your money and takes you choice :-)

In defence of the mushroom "lumps", they do tend to have a better balance in the hand - the inline bat types are slightly "top heavy".

The other advantage of the lump battery is they are available in higher capacities, while also being lighter and somewhat cheaper than the 18V versions.

So if you had say:

Additional 4Ah battery packs are only ~£40

(actually cheaper than the 2Ah version!)

[RJH]

I find the Makita 14.4V tools I have (multitool and hammer drill) feel very nicely balanced with the 2Ah batteries. And at least they'll stand up - just about.

I'm not convinced of the advantage brands like Bosch and Makita have over Lidl/Aldi. But I've invested in Makita batteries and chargers now, so they've got me for a while :-)

[Theo]

Bosch drill+charger+2 batteries = £57

Then add the impact for £75: A bit more but you get a drill out of it too, and Bosch quality likely to be better than Lidl.

Theo

[Chris Green]

That's actually rather a good deal! Slightly less well specified than ny Parkside but you're getting a Bosch Professional tool.

I want a drill + impact driver set which share batteries. That's what I have with my Titan and Duratool ones. The Titan drills are wearing ou though (not the impact driver strangely). The Duratool ones are still going strong but the drill doesn't have an auto-lock chuck which I find annoying.

[John Rumm]

Indeed - parkside money for A blue Bosch...

in fact compared to:

it is also a good deal (that has higher capacity batteries)

It looks like that paring will use the same batts.

e.g.

[Theo]

I bought a Makita 18v drill/impact set, mostly for the batteries and charger. 'How different can it be from my Aldi 14.4v' I thought - I planned to sell the drill. Night and day, it turns out. The Makita is a lot more smooth and powerful, to the extent that I retired the Lidl mains hammer drill and just use the Makita now. The Makita may be brushless where the Aldi is brushed, I'm not sure. But the drill turned out to be worth a lot more to me than the £30 I'd have got back from it after postage and ebay fees.

Theo