I’ve been toying with the idea of replacing all my old, mostly corded, power tools with a single 18V system and like many others I’m trying to decide between Makita and Dewalt. They seem to be pretty even and most recommendations boil down to “pick the colour you like best”.
However I bought a subscription to a magazine that does a lot of product testing, and saw that they gave all Makita drills the lowest rating in the “expected battery life time” category because they only lasted 300 charging cycles out of the 400 they do as part of the test. Now 300 cycles is quite a lot for a home DIY:er, but is battery life something that Makita owners have had issues with? I can’t remember seeing anyone complaining about it when looking for user reviews and comments. However I do have a vague memory of some pros complaining about Makita “smart” tools shutting down supposedly because they detect that something might break, thus forcing the owner to hand it in for service.
Article in Swedish, and probably paywalled.
edit: Since I doing a bit of testing how annoying (i.e. mostly how high pitched) different drill drivers sound, which hopefully could be useful to someone else, I’ve updated the title to include this.
I don’t know, those testing reviews always seems like advertising to me - everyone got they preference, and always find something bad to say against competitors. I’d say, it’s really boils down to the color preference, and luck - you can buy highly praised faulty item, or high quality outlier. The thing is, you probably not going to count charging cycles, so you never know is they lasted 400 or 300.
I worked with Makita a lot, and never had battery issues. But, personally, for home use I bought top line Chinese nonames for fraction of the price (Deko, Ryobi etc). They doing work, and easy replaceable, if you have some issues (they working fine, so far).
I know what you mean with many “reviews” feeling like advertising, but that’s why I paid for a subscription to this magazine. They’re making their money entirely from readers so they should have less incentive to be biased. In contrast to youtubers who have been given free products (and sometimes money) to make reviews, or web sites with the only purpose to convince you to buy something using their affiliate links.
Many of the tests this magazine does are designed to be objective and reproducible. E.g. finding the largest hole it can drill into concrete, running the drills in a test rig to find how many hours they can go before failure and then opening the machines to see in which way they broke, measuring number of charge cycles for batteries, etc. Other tests are of course subjective, like handling, or “how annoying does this lawnmower sound from 10 meters distance” i a different test :) but they’re still performed by people who have the job to test and evaluate different products. The opinion of professionals who use these power tools daily is of course also valuable, but I think there’s a bigger risk that they have a favourite brand based on personal experience, as you say.
Maybe I got a bit sidetracked… I really hate all the fake review sites that google shoves in your face if you try to get buying advice for something and I do like to rant about things :)
I have a Ryobi drill-driver and it’s actually the main reason I started looking for higher quality tools. It definitely works for drilling and screwing, but it has a high pitched whine that makes it very unpleasant to use. Though perhaps all 18V brushless drills sound like this… Going to take a trip to a hardware store to see if they have any Makitas and Dewalts they let me test to compare. The matching Ryobi trimmer is similar, it does its job but it feels kinda cheap and wobbly so it annoys me when I use it. Probably not really worth the money to buy more expensive brands, especially based on how often I use the stuff, but having tools that feel “good” just makes the work much more pleasurable for me.
Yeah I understand your frustration with fake review sites) And to my experience all brushless drills sound kinda like that teeth drilling machines, my deko brushless 21v have same annoying sound.
Of course you do you, if you want something solid and ready to spend some cash, why not? I cheaped out mainly because I had not so good experience with “semi professional” tools, like Bosh and B&D, and Chinese equivalent feels same to me, and I’m not ready to spend lots of money on big name.
The local Hornbach only had batteries in some of the tools and most of them were discharged, but a very helpful young man (I mean who worked there) went to great lengths to hunt down working batteries and to open boxes for me so I could try a couple of drill drivers I was interested in. Unfortunately I couldn’t do side-by-side comparison, but I tried to take some mental notes :) You’re right in that they all sound kinda bad, but there were some nuances.
IMO Ryobi (the one I have at home) and DeWalt (DCD791) ties for most unpleasant sound, with very high pitched whine that gets worse the faster the motor runs. Makita (DDF484) is almost as bad, but the sound didn’t have the same sharpness, i.e. probably slightly lower in frequency. I also tried one Hikoki (I thought I would remember it’s name but I don’t) with very similar size and power to the others, and it had a somewhat high pitched sound at the start and end of the operation but was more tolerable while it was running at speed.
I also tried another Hikoki (DS18DD) just because it happened to have a charged battery in it :) It was visibly smaller than the other ones I tested, and had a max speed of 1700 rpm, but holy crap it was quiet. Very low volume and relatively low frequency even at max speed. At first I thought it used some different technology but it was 18V brushless like the rest.
Might go to a different store to try out some Milwaukee and Metabo some other day, just to be sure.
Mate, you should write for some tech review site, I’ll subscribe)
Thanks, I think :) If I reviewed power tools for work I’d publish SPL graphs for them, similar to what you see for loudspeakers. I can get a bit obsessive when researching things to buy, probably because I hate to get disappointed, and minor flaws annoy me, sometimes more than they should.
I guessed you weren’t that interested, but I wanted to write down my findings in case someone stumbles upon this thread some time in the future. I’ve found a lot of good info in old reddit conversations. So without further ado, here’s the results from today:
I went to Bauhaus, where they were clever enough to not block the battery slot with the anti-theft device, so they just gave me a battery and let me play around as much as I liked. On the downside they don’t sell Makita anymore, so there was only DeWalt + a few brands that I’m not interested in at the moment.
Retesting the DCD791 it was more tolerable than I remembered, definitely not as ear piercing as the old Ryobi at home. It has a bit of a whine all the time which increases in loudless with speed, but I think I’d tolerate doing some quick jobs without feeling I need hearing protection.
The new DCD800 was much more silent on slower speeds, but once I fully pressed the trigger it got a very loud and high pitched sound.
Found a DCD777 which was almost silent (relatively speaking), very similar to the Hikoki DS18DD both in sound level and slightly lower max speed…
They also had an older DCD790 which was surprisingly quiet. It has a max speed of 2000 rpm, though according to specs it’s similar in power to the 777, while the newer 791 delivers around 100W more power.
That’s review right here) For me, no matter how thoroughly I research something before I buy, it’s always some chance to be disappointed in the end, so I try to let go, and not think too much about it. Though, I hope you find your perfect set, mate)