Buying the best cordless drill is about choosing a cordless drill that suits your needs.
A cordless drill does the same thing – drills holes and works with screws. But the features, performance range, mode of operation, comfort and accessories vary a lot with every cordless drill.
And fortunately or unfortunately, there are lots of cordless drill models in the market to choose from – that can always make your confusion worse.
But here’s the key. No matter how many different brands and features are there in the market, all you need is to choose the best cordless drill that suits your needs.
You don’t have to sweat it out with fancy features, or price, or stick to a brand. You know what you want. You know the purpose of buying a cordless drill.
So you know better.
Nevertheless we will help you with making the right decision.
After all, choosing the wrong cordless drill can be really annoying. You’d have hoped for getting your job done like a pro with your new cordless drill.
But what if things go wrong? What if you have selected the wrong cordless drill?
Your time and money will go wasted, plus you will still have the tasks that you need to complete (either at home, or office, or for your profession) with your cordless drill.
So let’s see some of the features that you need to look into, so you can make your decisions without the confusion!
Power of the cordless drill
Since we are talking about cordless drills, power here means battery power or capacity. While it is natural to always assume more power is always the best, it is not very true all the time.
The amount of power you require in your cordless drill highly depends on the kind of work you are going to perform with it.
For small and light screwing needs you won’t need much power. You will be unnecessarily paying for the extra power and you could be carrying a bulky cordless drill in your hands.
But if your drilling needs are tough, you will need to fetch a high end cordless drill with ample power.
The power (of battery) ranges from 8V – 30V these days. So you have a wide range of options to choose from.
If your sole purpose is to assemble a few IKEA furniture, and working with screws, 8–12V cordless drills will be more than enough.
For tough drilling jobs that include drilling tough surfaces and that require prolonged drilling, you will have to opt for 20V and up.
Speed control (trigger)
There is a huge difference between running your drill in full speed and making it just move. Here’s where the trigger/speed control comes into picture.
For light duty works that involve picture hanging or dealing with furniture screws you wouldn’t want to run your cordless drill in full speed.
It is not just about saving your battery, but overspeed when not needed will surely ruin your work!
If you have control over speed in the cordless drill you’re buying it is a cool thing.
Gears usually help you with speed control – so you need to look out for cordless drills that have a range of gears.
The kind of battery
Lithium Ion is the one you hear about quite often. These are most popular in recent days.
Earlier there were cordless drills with nickel-cadmium (NiCd) batteries that were the right choices for drills that require tough jobs.
Even now you can find a few models with NiCd batteries, but Li-ion has become quite popular since they compare to NiCd for delivering high power as well as being environmental friendly.
Li-ion batteries also have better battery life compared to NiCd batteries.
Clutch settings
Clutch helps you to have control over the turning action of the drill. This is particularly useful when you want to avoid overdriving a screw.
Having a clutch helps stop the drill head from turning when the torque on the screw gets high.
Look out for a range of clutch settings in the cordless drill you buy.
Cordless drill handle
There are usually two types of handles – the pistol handle and the T-type handle.
Pistol handle is where the handle is behind the drill motor and the cordless drill as a whole resembles a pistol.
Recently the T-handles have become more common and popular because of the excellent grip and control they provide.
In general T-handles offer a better overall balance because the battery is incorporated in the bulk weight of the motor.
Also your hand will be out of the way so you can easily access tighter spaces and drill all the way.
On the other hand, pistol handles help you apply pressure directly behind the drill point – so they can suit heavy duty tasks.
Nevertheless, when you are going to buy a cordless drill, make sure you try and hold both these types of drills to see which one you feel comfortable with.
After all it is about your own comfort and the type of work that’s needed to perform with the drill.
Brands
A few brands that are quite popular with cordless drills are the following:
- Dewalt
- Makita
- Black & Decker
- Bosch
- Hitachi
- Milwaukee
- Panasonic
- Craftsman
Cool Features, Additions and add-ons
Apart from having the “core” features it will be really cool and comfortable to have some additional features on your cordless drill.
Here are a few features that you can count on.
Work light
Not always you will have the comfort of working under bright lights. And usually when you are using a drill you might want to sneak into uncomfortable places with low or no light.
Hence, an in-built work light is a great addition to your cordless drill.
Battery charger
This is usually a must. Not all cordless drills offer this, but this is a necessity in my opinion.
Battery is a very crucial element for cordless drills and if you don’t have a handy battery charger with you always, you could be in trouble.
When you are about to get some important work done and if your battery is dead, this can be really annoying. A battery charger in that case is a cool addition.
Battery charge indicator
Some cordless drills have this handy indicator. If you know when how much charge you have left in your cordless drill you can prepare ahead for your work.
You can either carry a battery charger or an additional battery with you if you know that your battery is about to die.
Not only for convenience, but a battery charge indicator can be a life saver for batteries – if you run the batteries completely dry, you can damage the batteries and their life!
So a battery charge indicator is a surely cool and essential addition.
Chuck size
What is a chuck? It is the hole where your drill bit fits. The hole is at the end of the drill. Mostly you’ll need a 13mm chuck that can accommodate larger drills and gives good grip and power for the drill bits.
Some cordless drills only have 10mm chucks that can suit very light duty drilling.
Also make sure your chuck is keyless for comfort as you can easily tighten or loosen the drill bit and chuck free by hand instead of having to look for a key every time.
Are you ready to buy your cordless drill?
There you go! I’ve covered the aspects you need to look into while buying a cordless drill as well as the details about those features/aspects.
Obviously I cannot recommend you one cordless drill by name because you know the drill – I mean, you know your needs, requirements, nature of work and other things.
Now keeping all these features in mind (you might want to bookmark this page), visit your local store and try out a few cordless drills by putting your hands on them.
Comfort matters a lot. No matter how feature-rich a drill is, if it doesn’t fit comfortably in your hands (or in the hands of the one who is going to actually use the drill), there is no use in buying that drill.
Compare the comfort with the features available and weigh in the plus and minus, keeping in mind the actual work you will be performing using the drill.
All the best with buying your cordless drill.
And you will find a lot more reviews, comparisons and useful information in this site. So stay tuned!
