While if drilling into plasterboard, a lower wattage will suffice. For most basic home DIY jobs, a watt drill is adequate. Cordless drill power is measured in volts.
The higher the voltage rating is, the more powerful the drill. Battery sizes typically range from 12V to 20V.
Sooner or later you will almost certainly need to drill into masonry. To do this you will need a drill with hammer action. If you wish to drill large-diameter holes in masonry, select a corded drill with a low speed gear. If you envisage drilling into a variety of materials — such as wood, plastic or metal — you should choose a drill with a multiple-speed feature.
If so, look for a drill that has variable speed or torque control and is also reversible, so that it will not only drive in but also remove screws. There are several types of drill you can choose from which can make it difficult to pick the right one for the task. If all you want to do is drill small holes in wood and plasterboard and occasionally masonry, the best choice is a drill with hammer action.
Pick one with an 18V battery or at least watts for a corded model. A chuck size of 13mm should be adequate — this means it will take a good range of drill bits up to 13mm in diameter.
If you want a bit more from your drill, you need to know what they can offer. To help, we have outlined the key features of each type of drill and the kind of jobs they are best suited to so that you can identify which option is right for you.
These lightweight cordless screwdrivers are ideal for all those screwdriving jobs around the house. These handy little power tools are more convenient and lighter to use than drill drivers. Forward and reverse settings make these tools easy to use, but they cannot drill holes. These drills not only drill holes into wood and metal, they also act as drivers — this means they can loosen and tighten screws using different drill and screwdriver bits.
Drill drivers are Ideal for putting up shelves, hanging pictures and assembling flat pack furniture. Combi drills offer all the same features as a drill driver, but with the additional hammer-action feature, making it suitable for drilling into masonry and brick too.
These 3-in-1 drills make them a great all rounder. Impact drivers are primarily a heavy-duty screwdriver for repetitive or larger screwdriving projects. It uses an impact mechanism that helps reduce the impact on your wrist by doing more of the hard work for you.
They are effective for tightening bolt heads and nuts as well as drilling into metal due to its high torque capacity. Impact drivers are slightly more compact and lightweight compared to a drill driver. Hammer drills, also known as impact drills or percussion drills, are a powerful option suitable for drilling hard surfaces like concrete and masonry.
A hammer drill is perfect for those more heavy-duty jobs around the home, from putting up shelves to securing gutters in place. Multiple torque settings allow you to adjust the power while keeping the RPM low, so it can power through hard materials whilst limiting damage to the surface area. Hammer drills do not always have a reverse screwdriving function, but impact drills do. Contact us today to discuss your needs! Get in touch today to let us know!
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. Contact Us. About the Author Latest Posts. Brandon J Chapman is the General Manager of Fastening House Inc, a company which specializes in providing electrical, mechanical, general contractors, and sub-contractors with the products, tools, and equipment they need to do the job right.
He is a seasoned manager with experience in operations, entrepreneurship, finance, sales, process design, and training. About Our Blog. Blog Categories. Otherwise, as with the Bosch and Milwaukee, you need to put each battery into the drill and activate the drill in order to see how much charge remains. With the battery designed to slide into the base of the handle, DeWalt also had room to place the LED down below the grip.
The alternative location for the light, which many other volt drills use, is just above the trigger. Even with the drill inside, the bag is compact, and you can easily stuff it in a closet or on a basement shelf. The one slight negative we found with the DeWalt DCDF2 kit is that taking the battery off the tool is a little counterintuitive. As on most drills, a sliding tab releases the battery, but on the DeWalt volt, you need to press the tab in toward the drill.
Other models, such as the volt DeWalt DCDD2, have the tab sliding away from the tool, making it easier to just grab, unlatch, and pull off. This is truly a minor point, though, and once we got used to the tab on the volt, we had no issues. For that, you need a hammer drill function. Also, the small convenience features that we like so much on the DeWalt, such as the useful light placement and the foot-style battery, are absent here. It was the only brushed drill we tested that could hang with the brushless models.
Bosch has gone with a canister-style battery that slides up into the handle, making the handle fatter and more difficult to hold than that of the DeWalt. The LED is positioned right above the trigger, so it illuminates a smaller area. The battery life indicator is on the tool rather than on the battery, and the drill has no belt hook. To determine this, we drilled five 1-inch holes with the volt and five with the volt. Both drills completed the task, but the volt did so in 20 seconds, whereas the volt took 1 minute.
During the test, the volt often got bound up and had a much harder time, while the volt just blew right through the wood. The volt drill, on the other hand, is built for these tasks. On a single battery charge, the DeWalt volt drilled 52 1-inch holes through the 2-by The larger DeWalt shares all of the successful characteristics of its volt counterpart. It has the same excellent handle, the foot-style battery, and a great belt hook.
As on the volt drill, the LED sits at the foot of the volt tool, but here DeWalt has put an unusual spin on the idea. The Milwaukee is a little shorter from tip to tail but is an ounce heavier.
We gave the DeWalt volt the edge here only because the Milwaukee drill does not have additional light features and the case lacks extra room to store drill or driver bits. If you see this model for less than the DeWalt volt, go for it. Or, if you already own tools on the Milwaukee M18 platform, you have a convenient way to expand your set with this drill.
In all ways, this drill splits the difference between the 12 and volt DeWalts. During our tests, the Atomic drilled 32 1-inch holes, about 10 more than the volt and 10 less than the volt—a median measure right down the middle on performance.
It sports the nice DeWalt handle, and has solid durability and the well-positioned LED which only comes on when the trigger is pulled. In our tests, it put up almost the same numbers as the DeWalt Atomic. Ridgid also has a very large volt platform , so like the DeWalt Atomic, this is a great entry point into the larger world of DIY tools.
But this Skil model falls short in power versus the others we tried. It also has an overload-protection feature that constantly kicked on while we were using the tool, which was annoying. The power is not that great, either. It also tends to be more expensive, and it has the LED positioned at the top of the handle.
We also looked at the Bosch DDS , which is the same tool but with larger batteries. We also noted an inconsistent showing from the batteries, as one of them was able to drill only nine holes we ran the test four times with that battery. The Hitachi also lacks bit storage and a battery gauge. Cordless Drills , Consumer Reports. Doug Mahoney is a senior staff writer at Wirecutter covering home improvement. He spent 10 years in high-end construction as a carpenter, foreman, and supervisor.
He lives in a very demanding year-old farmhouse and spent four years gutting and rebuilding his previous home. He also raises sheep and has a dairy cow that he milks every morning.
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