Tuesday, 23 October 2018

How did I manage without one of these?

A few days ago, after some deliberation, I bought myself a combi drill, which I take to mean a combination drill/screwdriver. At a shade under £50 from Aldi it must be among the cheapest on the market.

My August Toolstation catalogue lists a similar spec Bauker drill driver a penny cheaper at £49.98; the next comparable tool is double that and still has the same capacity batteries.

This Aldi Workzone device comes with two 1.5 Ah lithium ion batteries, a five hour charger, a selection of drill and screwdriver bits and a good carry bag.

Minutes after cycling home with my purchase I was fixing a wood block to the wall of the house; this afternoon I did some more drilling and screwing jobs at Andrew's house in Sheffield. It's so quick and easy! For all these years I have been stringing up extension leads, fiddling with a chuck key, finding the right screwdriver (manual, of course) and so on. Now everything is in one small bag, with no need of mains electricity. The jobs took less than half the time they would have done. I would say "Who knew?" but I expect you all did.

Yes, the batteries may be on the small side, but the sort of jobs I need a drill for are usually small ones themselves. Neither is the motor brushless. Nevertheless I suspect my faithful old Black and Decker may never get powered up again.

2 comments:

Vallypee said...

Is it powerful enough to drill through steel, John? I use these types of cordless drills all the time except when I need to make a hole in metal. Then I still need my dedicated power drill.

Halfie said...

Val, I haven't tried it on steel yet, but it coped very well drilling into brick. It certainly feels powerful enough - I suspect the limiting factor as far as steel is concerned would be the quality of the bit.