What kind of cordless drill should i get

If you need to take on the occasional heavier job, you can always rent a hammer drill from a home center. Drills in this category are built around brawny to volt batteries, giving them the power to drive large fasteners and bore holes through thick boards. All that capability means heavy-duty drills tend to be the most expensive and heaviest. Impact drivers are extremely powerful tools engineered for inserting long screws, fasteners, and lag bolts.

Lots of them. Compact and lightweight, they're designed for speed and efficiency on heavy-duty jobs like construction, deck building, or home improvements. Impact drivers aren't equipped with chucks. Instead, they rely on hex-shaped drill bits and trigger-generated torque up to 3 times the RPMs as drills —so exercise caution not to overdrive screws into wood, metal, or cement.

A drill should feel good in your hand. So before buying a new one, clip in the battery and grip it to see how it handles and whether you can tolerate the weight for longer jobs. Impact drivers are especially adept at drilling overhead. Some general-use drills have a pistol grip, with a cylindrical battery buried in the handle, and they are quite comfy to grasp.

Cordless drills are sold in three configurations: 1 As a stand-alone tool with one or two batteries and a dedicated charger 2 As part of a collection of cordless tools from a single brand, called a kit 3 As a bare tool, with no battery or charger. Just know that kits typically feature volt tools, so the included drill would be a heavy-duty model. Kits often come with two batteries and a charger. If you already have a compatible battery from a different cordless tool, a bare drill option 3 will suffice.

Option 3 is the least expensive but the worst value. The size tells you two important things about a drill. First, it provides an upper limit for the shank size of the bits the drill can accommodate. Early Li-ion batteries often needed to be charged and used under precise conditions to ensure peak performance.

But the newest generation of batteries and chargers prevents overcharging batteries, alleviating the need to drain them fully between charges to ensure the longest possible life. New chargers also include an indicator light, which clearly displays how close the battery is to a full charge. Some brands also have indicator lights on the batteries themselves.

Li-ion batteries for cordless power tools have two important specs. Voltage correlates roughly to power. An volt drill will be more powerful than a volt drill from the same brand. But a Amp-hours indicates how much fuel the battery contains, which translates to run time. And because some batteries charge in as little as 25 minutes, you might prefer two smaller batteries. Brushless motors reduce friction and sense resistance from the work material, continually adjusting the amount of power they draw from the battery.

Manufacturers say this translates to longer run times, more power, and a longer product life. In CR's cordless drill tests, the top six heavy-duty models all feature brushless motors, as does the top-performing general-use drill—the only volt drill with a brushless motor we tested.

Warranties indicate manufacturers' confidence in brushless technology: three to five years on the new tool vs. We think that makes brushless a smarter buy. Almost all cordless drills come with a built-in LED work light, a single Phillips bit, and extras such as belt clips and hard-sided cases. 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. SDS drills have the same features as hammer drills, but the hammer action is improved with an SDS function commonly referred to as the Slotted Drive System. A piston firing the drill bit forward and pulling it back drives the hammer action on these drills.

This reduces friction and increases strength, allowing SDS drills to punch through the toughest materials with ease. Special SDS drill bits are used to eliminate the bit slipping and also to withstand the powerful force of its hammer action.

These drills make light work of chiseling and chasing jobs. Designed to handle breaking up hard materials like concrete, asphalt, bricks and blocks. Breakers and demolition drills deliver more powerful blows to the surface and can also be used to chisel channels in masonry and remove tiles. Depth stop: Fitted to the side of the drill, a depth stop can be adjusted to ensure that the hole being drilled does not exceed the desired depth.

This feature can also give you a consistent depth when making multiple holes. Trigger-activated LED: A handy feature to have, especially in dark conditions, is a trigger-activated LED light that automatically lights up when the speed trigger is pulled. The light will automatically switch off a few seconds after the trigger is released.

Auxiliary handle: An auxiliary handle improves both safety and accuracy when drilling. With that many clutch settings, you can really fine-tune the power a drill delivers. Settings with the lowest numbers are for small screws, higher numbers are for larger screws. Most clutches also have a drill setting, which allows the motor to drive the bit at full power. The least expensive drills run at a single speed, but most have two fixed speeds: rpm and rpm.

A slide switch or trigger lets you select high or low speed. These drills are ideal for most light-duty operations. The low speed is for driving screws, the high speed for drilling holes. For more refined carpentry and repair tasks, choose a drill that has the same two-speed switch and a trigger with variable speed control that lets you vary the speed from 0 rpm to the top of each range.

And if you do more hole drilling than screwdriving, look for more speed — 1, rpm or higher — at the top end. Nickel-metal-hydride NiMH batteries represent the latest breakthrough in batteries. They're smaller and run longer than standard nickel-cadmium Nicad batteries.

NiMH batteries also pose less of a hazard when it comes to disposal than Nicads because they don't contain any cadmium, which is highly toxic. All cordless drills come with a battery charger, with recharge times ranging from 15 minutes to three hours. But faster isn't necessarily better. A contractor might depend on fast recharges, but slower recharging isn't usually a concern at home, especially if you have two batteries.

What's more, there are drawbacks to fast charging. A quick recharge can damage a battery by generating excessive heat, unless it's a specially designed unit.

If you want a speedy recharge, go with a tool from Makita, Hitachi or Panasonic, whose "smart" chargers are equipped with temperature sensors and feedback circuitry that protect batteries. These units provide a charge in as little as nine minutes without battery damage.

Powertools E. Joppa Road Towson, MD www. Craftsman Tools www. Norcross, GA www. Makita U. La Mirada, CA Porter-Cable Corp. Ryobi America Corp. Anderson, SC www. S-B Power Tool W. Peterson Ave.