Peter Brett reviews four high-street brand, budget drills:
– Wickes’ Cordless Drill Driver 10.8v Lithium
– Argos’ Challenge 14.4 Impact Drill
– Argos’ Guild 18v Lithium Ion Drill Driver
– Robert Dyas’ Hilka PRO-CRAFT 18v Lithium Ion Cordless Drill
“THE first review I ever wrote for TOOLKiT (then titled ToolBusiness Magazine) more years ago than I care to remember, was a roundup of cordless drills. They ranged in price from £12 to nearly £100. Lithium Ion had not been heard of and if you got 12v of power you were lucky – the norm was more like 7.2v or 9.6v. Nevertheless, it was enough to drive screws up to about 35mm (in softwood with a pilot hole) or drill holes up to about 10mm in diameter. Compared to using a pump-action screwdriver – the Yankee – using a cordless drill was positively controlled and easy.
“I am not a believer in the notion that things were always better in the old days. Some things might have been better, but I wouldn’t swap my 21st century tools and fixings. They are simply better, quicker, easier, more accurate and possibly even relatively cheaper too. So it seemed like a good idea when the editor suggested that we evaluate some budget cordless drill drivers to try to get a perspective on how things have developed. Accordingly, I was given a budget of around £120 and told to scour the sources to find a representative sample of cordless drills to examine closely.
“As expected, online offers are many and various but I wanted to find the tools where the delivery time was realistic, (not direct from China) and also where a non-specialist tool user might look if they needed a budget drill. I managed to find three samples from the high street stores Argos and Robert Dyas. These represented good value and the typical tools that an occasional tool user might buy. Wickes supplied the last sample.
“All the drills had the now universally adopted, more powerful Lithium Ion battery packs. No more nasty, poisonous NiCads. But clearly the battery packs on the samples were at the cheap end of the market – 18v battery packs for top branded tools could easily cost £100 or more.”
Read the full review in TOOLKiT digital magazine: