Best Cordless 18V Drills?

Inner10

Or what they make the most money on...

Who would you ask for advice the guys using it in the feild everyday or the guy selling it?

Phillip Marsh

With cordless tools using NiCads the battery and charger technology went back decades. With lithium-ion it is relatively new technology and the manufacturers are still working out the kinks - as with Sony that had to recall over a million lithium-ion battery packs that were installed in laptops. When NiCads overheat the battery life is shortened but with lithium-ion they can burst into flames so the manufacturers are much more conservative with the shut-off electronics, sometimes too much so as with the Hitachi and Milwaukee M18 lithium-ion battery packs. Recharge times vary from 15 minutes to 45 minutes and it may be that the Makita and DeWalt chargers are better or users may find that the batteries fail after few recharged - time will tell.

With corded tools it mattered a lot less whether a particular blade or drill or hole saw was the most efficient at cutting but with cordless tools it matters a good deal. I have done 2" holes in subflooring with a brand new Lenox bi-metal hole saw and had it take 40 seconds and the battery which started out with a full charge took more than 30 minutes to recharge. I have made holes in the same Sturd-I flooring with a 2" Blue Boar TCT hole cutter and had the hole cut in 4 seconds and there was no need to recharge the battery. My success was much more dependent on selecting the best hole cutter than on selecting the best drill.

With all these tests on youtube.com no one knows if the battery started out with a full charge or if the RPM range selected was the best one for the job. What I really have come to appreciate is the 3-speed gear box on the new DeWalt XRP lithium-ion DCD970 drill. It has a middle and a high range setting that is equivalent to the normal 2-speed ranges on other drills. But the lowest setting is like having a granny gear on a truck and it lets the drill work at a more efficient speed both in terms of pushing the hole cutter or screw but also in terms of the rate of the charge drain from the batteries and the battery pack runs much cooler. This is not something that is important with a drill that is plugged into an outlet but I have found it makes a big difference in how well a cordless drill performs, especially with very large holes or holes in very hard materials.

When I buy a drill and it turns out to be a mistake I give it away (like the Hitachi I bought earlier this year) to someone who is not going to be using it to earn a living. When I find a drill like the XRP lithium from DeWalt I am temped to paint it pink to keep it from walking off the job site when someone else sees how well it performs. The DeWalt is the clunkiest feeling drill in the hand of any drill I use but it is in most other ways the best cordless drill I have used.

hammer11379

I love the Makita 18v impact driver for cabinet installations

Kastoria

Hitachi only for me. Only drill I used that has never given up on me (havent tried hilti though - dewalt, milwaukee crapped out in a years time). I have 5 cordless/hammerdrills and 2 impacts right now - 18V. Get used and abused everyday, dropped all the time and do plenty of railing installations where I am drilling through steel tubing/solid steel fixing plates and concrete floors for anchor bolts. Impacts are great too for all the lag screws I put in. Only complaint is color and the cordless drill/hammer drills are a bit chunky up top. Ive had these drill going on just over 3 years now and not a complaint, havent even replaced a battery. (Nicads suck, but still work like suppose to, just not as long a run time as the lithium ions). Just picked up a 36V Bosch but havent really put it through any tough work yet.

TempestV

That's interesting- a guy I work with from time to time had a Hitachi, and the batteries wouldn't 5 minutes of hard use. He had about 4 batteries, and they were all like that, even brand new. Nothing was really wrong with the drill, but the batteries sucked. He used to cuss that thing every time he went to use it.

Kastoria

The nicads suck...sometimes I can get a good charge out of them when its wood or screw related but not much when drilling steel or concrete. The lithium ions work great. I just installed railings on a 3 story apartment complex all three floor staircases front and rear - one lithium battery for the install and one battery to drill through the 1/4 inch fixing plates and concrete. Thats pretty good. 8 hour job, 2 batteries. Either I got lucky with my bats or your friend got screwed. I generally keep my batteries indoors at room temp to store them and plug all of them in for charging every three months without fail regardless if they werent even used since the last charge. Thats what hitachi told me to do to make them last longer, so thats what I do.

It doesnt matter what drill make or model or type of battery technology there is there is always a bad batch and a good batch as far as Im concerned. I have a set of Ryobi 18V nicads that are going on 7 years old and the original nicad batteries hold a great charge, even better than the hitachi nicads. But those also go on the charger every three months. A little extra up keep goes a long way, as long as you dont mind chargers all over the house for a day or 2.