Makita dude is ripped, but funny that he’s holding a DeWalt-looking…thing.
never ceases to amaze me that AI has such a hard time with basic text, but IMO that’s probably not something they want to be refined. Too much liability in churning out fake imagery with actual copyrighted/trademarked brands and the like.
DeWalt: high quality and good pedigree but overpriced = Slytherin
Milwaukee: basically the same as DeWalt, but less pretentious. Thinks they’re better and tougher though = Gryffindor
Makita: the smart choice for value, also best colors = Ravenclaw
Ryobi: I know it will break, but they’re just tools and I’m not serious about this anyway. I would rather spend more money on my family or other hobbies = Hufflepuff
Honorable mentions of other “houses” and schools in the thread.
Black and Decker/Craftsman/whatever. Used to be very impressive, but completely corrupted. Probably evil = Durmstrang (Russian school)
Festool: Beautiful, absolutely dripping with wealth signals. Still pretty amazing at what they do, but you might not want them on a job site = Beauxbatons (super wealthy French school)
Harbor freight: Simple, potentially the most powerful but also likely to break. Can probably accomplish what you need by using a wrench as a hammer, but you wouldn’t want to do anything delicate with it. Actually the biggest group of dad-wizards = Uagadou (the school in Uganda where magic was invented but they don’t use wands)
I don’t know where you shop but DeWalt is cheaper than Milwaukee and Makita. Project Farm tests show Milwaukee as usually best but trades wins against Makita.
So no, DeWalt isn’t overpriced. It’s cheaper and less quality. Neither is Milwaukee equivalent to DeWalt. Milwaukee/Makita are better, sometimes incredibly better than DeWalt but at a much higher price.
I want to see model numbers on those prices you’re comparing.
Anything I go to an actual store, DeWalt is more then Milwaukee. I never look at Ryobi or Makita because they are not good professional tools and break much faster then DeWalt or Milwaukee
Those are hard to compare, especially at Home Depot. They are always having combo deals. Those are also the cheaper lines, the MAX XR and M18 FUEL are where the prices separate. That’s the top of the line of each brand.
Could be, but there are also like 80 different impact drivers in each brand, so tough to compare apples to apples. I also bought all my power tools years and years ago, so just going off what I remember when I was doing my research. I actually own mostly DeWalt and some Makita and Harbor Freight, and my router stuff is all Bosch. The only Milwaukee stuff I own is their M18 yard tools stuff and it’s really shoddily built and quite shit, though it did look the best compared to the alternatives - so probably just a function of compromising on a multi tool. But hey, I’m just one dad.
The one thing I know for sure is there’s a silly amount of brand loyalty and sweeping generalizations (like the ones I made!), and it’s tough to cut through any of it since tool review websites and videos are probably the worst example of AI generated blogspam I experience in my daily life. Unless someone’s a professional tradesman, they probably don’t get to use tools enough to have well-informed opinions, and then their needs don’t even really match harry homeowner in the first place!
It’s probably best to just do blind tribalism and give us something to make fun of other dads for. What I’m trying to say is your response is exactly what someone in House Milwaukee would say.
We’ve reached the ends of my knowledge of both tool brands and Harry Potter unfortunately. Hilti I’ve got no idea - I only feel bad about leaving out Bosch.
Depending on what you’re doing, you absolutely want Festool on a job site. A Rotex sander is fantastic for doing the edges when you’re refinishing hardwood floors, for instance. (Goddamn incompatible sanding discs though… You have to buy the Festool discs if you want the dust management.) For some jobs, there really aren’t any viable alternatives to Festool; no one else makes a domino joiner, which is somewhere between a plate joiner and a mortise and tenon joint. (You can get close by using a precision doweling jig, but the domino joiner is fast. Mortise and tenons are fantastic joints, but a mortising machine isn’t terribly portable, and cutting one by hand is far, far more skill than I have.)
I’m familiar, but does a domino go to a job site? Or does it stay in a dedicated shop full of fancy/specialized tools?
Also we should probably remember we’re talking dads getting sorted, not actual professionals, so if I’m wrong in industry - it’s because I’m coming from hobbyist dad-land. I don’t even know anyone with anything festool. At best I’m going off of forums and YouTube and guessing at what fancy dads want…though I wouldn’t mind a domino of someone else is paying!
A domino joiner on a job site would be good for things like putting together pieces or a banister (railing) where you needed both the strength or something like a doweled joint as well as the alignment capability of a biscuit joiner. It’s going to add strength to any kind of mitered joint that would be glued/where you don’t want to see nails. Most of the uses are going to be in cabinetry or furniture rather than in general carpentry and contracting, but it definitely has a few very specialized uses on a job site.
I am not a contractor, but I did it for a very brief period of time (until the business owner stiffed me of about a thousand in pay, and I realized it wasn’t a good side gig).
“Yeah. Cordless’ll do that. You might want to consider the powder-actuated tool. The Hilti DX460MX or the Simpson PTP. These two are my Cadillacs. Everything else on this board is second best, sorry to say. Are you contracting or just doing some work around the house?”
Interestingly I have a first generation Bosch Uneo (green consumer device, non changeable battery). Uneo is a consumer level cordless screwdriver and pneumatic hammer drill hybrid, it will easily put up to four to six holes into concrete walls (enough for home use when hanging something, but afterwards it’s empty and needs to be recharged)
The Uneo is one of my most useful tools for occasional use, and I know of no other brand which offers a similar tool which fulfills those roles in a non-craftsman home.
If you regularly build stuff its battery is too weak, but I use it a few times a year. Hang a picture, lamp or a wall cupboard in my apartment (which partly has concrete walls in this high-rise building) - not a problem.
On top of Ryobi tools, when my Dyson cordless vac battery stopped holding a charge, I bought a Ryobi -> Dyson adapter, and now my Dyson vacuum also uses Ryobi batteries. Wife was really impressed with it because you can just swap out a new battery and keep on vacuuming. Also the vacuum actually make use of that battery way more than any of the actual power tools I have.
I’ve found that any project my Ryobi isn’t suited for is a project I would have opted to hire a professional anyway. 99% of people can get away with Ryobi 99% of the time. That remaining 1% really isn’t worth the increased price from brands like Dewalt.
Maybe I am a gorilla but every time I buy Ryobi - it breaks before the first job is done.
I got a Ryobi pressure washer and not even 2 hours into washing - it exploded like a fuckin bomb. Home Depot gave me a refund for the pressure washer but not my pants.
Same… it’s hard to justify getting the most expensive tools when I only use them once every 3-6 months. If other people want to spend their money keeping up with tool brands that’s a competition I’ll gladly lose. Got better things to spend my money on.
They are fine for anything which doesn’t require precision. I have a Ryobi bench sander and it’s a complete waste of time. Same with the chop saw I unused to have. It was basically impossible to get flush miters from it no matter how much you adjusted it - the tolerances were just too low. My DeWalt table saw and Chop saw don’t have the same issues. They cut sub-mm precision on day one and still do years later. The table saw in particular is technically a worksite saw, buy you can use it to build cabinets with the right blade.
This was me, with my few random ryobi tools, until I needed something new and saw one of those big combos of several tools from DeWalt was half price. So I lucked out being in the right place at the right time and got the best of both worlds.
Fortunately I already have like 4 DeWalt batteries. Somebody gave me a couple as a gift some time after I got the tool set. We definitely still have a Ryobi battery or two around as well!
But Ryobi and Milwaukee are both owned and manufactured by the same company TTI, they’re practically the same tools just with a different plastic shell
Owned by same company does not mean same tool. I own a bunch of m12 fuel and some Ryobi too. My Milwaukee stuff kicks the pants off of Ryobi but it is also a lot more expensive.
The AEG sub compact cut off tool, for example, is also sold as an M12 tool, and under the Ryobi name. Most of the AEG sub compact stuff shows up elsewhere in the TTI range, if you know where to look.
My battery drill, for example, had identical specs to a Milwaukee drill.
We have Volkswagen and Skoda at our place and there are a lot of common parts under the skin. The towbar electrics module I added to the Skoda is badged Audi.
I wasn’t talking about skoda/Audi/seat/Volkswagen because those are similar. I was using different examples to prove my point that not “all” things owned by same company is the same shit
Notice in my example they are all VAG brands but make completely different types of vehicles.
I’m in that fifth house that no-one ever seems to talk about: BOSCH.
J/K, I’m mostly Bosch, but I look towards whichever manufacturer makes the best version of a tool I currently need. For example, my chainsaws and yard/orchard power tools are Stihl, my lawnmower is Husqvarna, my circular saw, worm drive saw and abrasion/steel cutoff saw are all Skilsaw (not Skil!), and my oscillating multi tool is Fein.
Plus, many of the domestics are vintage, from before production was outsourced out of America, which makes them much more reliable and robust than modern tools. Even some of the other tools are vintage – my Stihl 076 Super can cut through a 60cm log like a hot knife through butter. And I have both 36″ and 72″ bars to go with it.
I always lean towards Bosch where possible, mainly because of their charitable work. The founder set things up so that it’s perpetually funded from the company profits. That just appeals to me as the tiebreaker when deciding between a bunch of similarly priced tools that will otherwise do the job well enough.
That said, I tend to go for corded options where practical. I have some corded tools that I’ve owned for over thirty years now that still get occasional use. Battery tools are convenient for their portability, but they do have a limit to their useful life.
That would put me in the Sixth House (seems like we’ve jumped ship from the Potterverse to the Locked Tomb series now?) as a Metabo HPT user – at least for battery-operated tools. I’ve got no allegiances when it comes to corded power tools, though – got everything from Harbor Freight only-need-it-for-one-job specials to DeWalt saws and routers, and a big ol’ Craftsman drill press I inherited from my grandfather.
Corded can be great! I have corded Bosch for anything in my workshop - why would I need batteries for a location with dozens of sockets? - and use batteries mainly in the field or where cords would start to get impractical. Plus, where the manufacturer only makes a battery version of the tool. The Bosch PROFACTOR GDS18V-740N, for example, only comes in a battery version. No corded version exists.
But when it comes to battery power tools, you have to pick a brand and stick with it, unless you’re John D Rockefeller with 6 types of charger and a billion battery packs.
Even within a brand, you usually contend with at least two different battery packs - 12v and higher - and even more if you keep your tools in good condition and their connection types are obsoleted before you buy more tools.
Couple years back I went to the graduation party of a kid my step daughter was friends. The dad had an entire wall pegboarded out with every possible Ryobi cordless tool. It was honestly impressive. And he had one Makita tool. Made me laugh.
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