So guys, i'm looking like i'll be up for a new cordless drill (with hammer) soon. (My current 6 year old Ozito 18V is no longer supported with spare batteries). None of my other tools except for an aldi impact driver are battery powered.
I'm trying to decide which brand to start and stick with.
I just want a quality brand that is supported with various skins and can be repaired.

Does anyone have good feedback or strong feelings?

The last 3 places I've worked all the tradies have or company supplied tradies with Milwaukee.

Hilti

If you cant get hilti then you clearly dont really need it for work and a milwaukee/makita from bunnings will do.

You after something for the shed or daily work?
my shed has 6 x 18V Ryobi drills, 1 hammer, 2 drivers, 3 drills, (2 set up for Kreg drilling etc I dont treat them with respect but they keep comming back for more.

My AEG kit has lasted me years and years, and I work it like it owes me a massive gambling debt.

Still using a Black and Decker combo thing I got 18 tears ago. Recently discovered that Amazon sells replacement batteries too ??

Kind of hard to justify buying yet another set of tools now...

There was a problem with my DeWalt so I took it back and got seven oozitos in exchange. I've still got two of them. That was nearly twenty years ago.

Milwaukee!!!!!! But depends how much your prepared to spend?

Cant go wrong with Bosch Blue, I use the 18v stuff every day, tools get dropped in dirt, dropped off roofs, left out in rain showers and generally worked hard and never had a problem.
My only gripe is they dont have as much of a skin range as Makita, Milwaukee etc, and are extremely slow in releasing any new skins, months if not years behind others.
Why do you need a hammer drill?, i stopped using hammer drills in the 1990's, if youve got more than one hole ever to drill in concrete, it'll be worth getting a SDS rotary hammer.

Hi, the industrial makita, not the handyman range.

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BlueMoon said..

Why do you need a hammer drill?, i stopped using hammer drills in the 1990's, if you've got more than one hole ever to drill in concrete, it'll be worth getting a SDS rotary hammer.

Not a tradie, but I wondered that too. Good cordless and a cheap corded hammer drill if doing a bit of concrete.
A proper rotary hammer if doing lots.
You need the weight in the drill so its hammering the material, not bouncing the drill back at you. And inertial torquefor when you hit stuff (ie heavy rotational mass in the guts of the drill).
Theres a reason you don't see 1kg rotary hammer drills

Recently I was in a shop that sells lots of brands, looked in the room where all the return for repairs tools were "waiting" to be fixed/replaced.
There were several different brands on a few shelves, there was one brand that filled all the shelves on one wall.
Think Happy Days..............

When I worked as a tradie all my power tools where blue but now I have a range of ryobi 18v gear and am happy with it. Btw if you're battery has craped it's worth gently busting it open you may find inside that battery case is a bunch of 1.5v rechargeables soldered together

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Mark _australia said..

BlueMoon said..

Why do you need a hammer drill?, i stopped using hammer drills in the 1990's, if you've got more than one hole ever to drill in concrete, it'll be worth getting a SDS rotary hammer.

Not a tradie, but I wondered that too. Good cordless and a cheap corded hammer drill if doing a bit of concrete.
A proper rotary hammer if doing lots.
You need the weight in the drill so its hammering the material, not bouncing the drill back at you. And inertial torquefor when you hit stuff (ie heavy rotational mass in the guts of the drill).
Theres a reason you don't see 1kg rotary hammer drills

I bought an Ozito SDS from the big green warehouse after reading people on Whirlpool rave about them. It has gone through one bathroom renovation and now going through a second. As you say, the inertia helps as these things just balance there while punching a hole through brickwork.

An electrician complained about how tough the bricks where in this house when he was adding powerpoints, yet the SDS just pounded through them.

We do lots of installs on mines and spend sooooo much on tooling it's not funny

if it's a hammer drill and your only drilling 10-20 holes at a time a cheap Ozito does the job pretty good especially for the price. We have one that has been in circulation for over two years and from how it's been treated should of died at least a year ago.

Some tools however have to be good legit brands or you may as well not even buy them
half inch and inch rattle guns are all Milwaukee there is no brand we have used that comes close. It's amazing what a half inch and three quarter Milwaukee set can pull apart in a day and also the 3/4 from memory does bolts up to 550ft/lb and a lot of them off one battery.

If you want a Milwaukee hammer drill for sure go for it and they are worth it but for that price you can get three or four ozito hammer drills and to be honest as long as you have good masonry bits it doesn't matter what driver you use.

I thought initially the ozito would overheat half way through a 12 hour shift but nup, loves it.

so for me rattle guns and grinders battery are Milwaukee

hammer drill/concrete drill ozitio

It is a bit different for us as anything with a cord tends to get damaged or require a new cord throughout its working life, they have to get tagged four times a year at $11 a tag as well.
to pay a park or on site to replace a cord/plug costs you half an hour to an hour of wages...

An ozito hammer drill costs 100 or so bucks so to have a back up one in the box means it's a fairly cheap insurance on a job and you can afford to have both of them going if there's a million chemsets or Ramsets to put in.