Power Supplies Reviews

For what this is, it is an excellent little beast.

It does its little tasks perfectly; I keep it for hinges and lock keeps. I set the depth at the beginning of the job and never have to change it. My more expensive and heavier router stays in the box.

Weighs nothing and with the right bit it saves me a fair amount of work.

Buy it without thinking too long or deep.

I just purchased this drill for some major three and four inch hole saw work that I had to due. The drill is a beast and you definitely need to use the extra handle to hold on when you are using the hole saws. I tried first without and almost snapped my wrist. Great drill.

I purchased this as an alternative to the DeWalt, I hate DeWalt tools. I did not know what to expect since the stores in my area only sold the DeWalt. I then decided to order this Makita unit. I was supprised that it is powerful and not too heavy or bulky. I used it all day installing garage doors and openers. It drove lag bolts with ease when working on a ladder holding this tool in one hand. Since then I have used it to build several decks. Saves time when driving lags without drilling in advance. Great tool to have.

I am a professional steel fabricator with 20 - 35 employees that use and abuse these grinders daily. I have been buying or specifying the tool purchases for my company for 17 years. Of all the small grinders we own, the Makita 5" grinder is by far the best performing and durable tool of its type and size. Second best is a distant second.

This tool is a handyman's dream. The price on this tool has tumbled elsewhere because Makita is reportedly phasing out this tool for reasons I don't know (hefty price?, hefty weight?, hefty size?). Too bad the Amazon price is still very high. Note that the BTD200SH is an impact driver and not an impact wrench. An impact driver has a quick change 1/4" hex chuck, whereas an impact wrench has a 3/8" square socket drive head. Only the impact driver has been discontinued. The identically built impact wrench version is still being manufactured.

First a caveat: I am only a homeowner and not a contractor. I use my tools to fix my own home and a couple of my mother's rental properties. My views are from a novice user's/handyman's vantage point.

I bought this tool after a contractor, whom I hired for a major repair job, touted to me the benefits of impact drivers when used to drive long wood screws. The benefits are: no hand strain, dramatically reduced chances of stripping the screw heads, being able to drive screws that your regular drill/driver would not have a prayer's chance of driving in the first place.

How does an impact driver do all that? An impact driver works by combining rotational action (as on a regular drill) with a strong hammering action in the rotational direction. The hammering action doesn't kick in until the rotational resistance reaches a certain point. Here is an analogy to help you understand the impact action: if you've ever changed tires with a factory original one sided nut wrench, you'd pull the lever as hard as possible in order to loosen a nut. Sometimes the nut may be so tight that it may be stuck and the wrench won't move. What do you do? You reposition the lever of the wrench and you step hard on the lever a couple of times until the nut is suddenly loose. The stepping action is almost identical to the impact torque action of the impact driver.

The Makita BTD200SH has 1774 in-lbs. of maximum torque (or equivalently 149 ft-lbs, or 200 Newton-meters for the metrically minded). For comparison, most top-notice 18V drill drivers fall in the 475 to 550 in-lbs. maximum torque range. And most other impact drivers on the market range from only 800 in-lbs. to perhaps 1200 in-lbs. This easily makes the Makita BTD200SH the most powerful cordless impact driver by a huge margin, although Milwaukee has an 18V cordless impact wrench with an even higher torque rating (240 ft-lbs), but the Milwaukee is an impact wrench and not an impact driver. Unfortunately for the Makita BTD200SH, along with the most torque in the class title, it claims the most weight in the class title as well. It weighs a comparatively very heavy 6.3 lbs., even though most 18V and 24V drill/drivers easily weigh this much. Most impact drivers, on the other hand, weigh only 4 lbs. or less. Maybe a combination of high price, heavy weight, etc. led to poor sales, which then forced Makita to discontinue the product. The true weight aside, it doesn't feel that heavy in the hand because the T-handle is very well balance.

To use an impact driver, lay the tip of a bit firmly and perpendicularly on a screw head and press the trigger slowly at first. Because impact drivers have a very high rotational speed, it's best to start slow to prevent the tip from jumping out and stripping the screw head. Once the screw starts rotating, you can then increase the RPM. The amazing thing with impact drivers is you don't feel the reaction force. Although the impact driver is torquing the screws at 1774 in-lbs., you don't feel any opposing torque at all. It's simply amazing. Try using a drill/driver even at 500 in-lbs. and your wrist may twist off, but not so with an impact driver. The only thing you'll feel is the very loud noise of the impacting action. It will get loud enough when driving large screws that you will need ear plugs. Besides driving screws, it can also act as a drill, although it can only accept quick change drill bits with a 1/4" hex shank. I've not tried the drilling mode myself but numerous reviews from other users of impact drivers show that it can handily drill up to 3/4" diameter in wood. Larger holes may cause the tool to vibrate excessively because of the impacting action. I have a feeling this impact driver will retire my cordless drill/driver or at least relegate it to true heavy duty drilling tasks only.

Tool specs:

bare weight with one 1.7 AH battery - 6.3 lbs.
maximum torque: 1774 in-lbs.
No load speed: Low 0 - 1,600 RPM; High 0 - 2,000 RPM
Impacts per minute: Low 0 - 2,500 IPM; High 0 - 3,000 IPM

The tool comes with a hard molded case, a 1-hr. quick charger, a 1.7 AH battery. I've read someone else's review on Amazon that the 1.7 AH battery holds enough charge to drive 1000 to 1200 1/2x12 lags before needing a charge(incredible), so maybe having only 1 battery is not too much of a drawback. I've not used mine often enough to verify the battery charge life. Still I bought a second kit, mostly just to get a second battery, which costs $130 retail anyway, and also to buy a second driver, charger, and hard case almost for a song before all the current closeout stocks are gone.

I don't get to use this little guy every day but when I need it , there is nothing else that will do. It is very compact and light. It has pretty good torque and speed. Of course you're not going to be running large self feed bits with it. That's why they make the big bad RA drills. This is perfect for tight spots and awkward situations though . It will drive any screw you need it to and works great for tight quarters drilling. Even though it's not the largest cordless , it is the most dependable on the market.

Don't waste your time with any other heat gun. The Makita is the best by far. The temperature adjustment knob is a little bit of a pain to use, but other than that it has the best heat of all the other guns I have used. I used mine to strip all the paint off the exterior of a 2000 sq. ft. bungalow and it is still going strong. I burned up a cheap Harbor Freight model after about 25 hours. I also used the Milwaukie, but it just didn't seem to heat up the paint as well as the Makita. Stripping paint is a boring, tedious job, so treat yourself right and get the job done faster so you can drink beer and watch the grass grow.

Metabo has quite a good name in the industry for small hand tools (especially thier grinders) and have only recently designed and sell miter saws. I bought this saw from a local dealer as a replacement for my well used and abused Makita LS1013 (which was and is a very good saw). This saw is big (the footprint mounts are 21" x 22") and the overall width is 26" and depth at 45". It was purchased to be mounted into a miter saw table and not carried to job sites. Although it is very heavy duty and would probably travel fine, there is no top handles so it must be carried from the sides. This saw also does not include a laser - which was actually a selling point for me.

The packaging was in prefect shape and better than most tools I've purchased. The rear fence straightness was right on and the table flatness was comparable to the Makita. I purchased the optional vacuum hose kit which is actually a tee'd hose that plugs into the normal dust bag port and also into the back for the unique "below" table suction. This kit includes adapters for various shop vac hoses as well as a 4" dust collection hose. I'm currently using a 2 1/2" shop vac and the dust collection is better than the Makita but it still makes a mess.

Setup was easy and I tweeked both the miter and bevel zeros. Other angles were then right on. The included blade is an 80T carbide tiped blade which isn't bad - I like the Forrest chopmaster blade better though and will be ordering one. This saw allows you to preset a user-defined miter angle. The clear miter hairline marker is actually "3" hairlines to help you better tweek an angle. The power cord runs through one of the slide tubes and out the back - a nice touch. This is a belt driven saw with a soft start motor with brake - it's proved to be surprisingly smooth and quieter than I expected. The bevel angle locks are in front of the rear support and are a little easier to get at than the Makita (which are in the back). The board clamp not only adjusts vertical of course but also horizontally for narrow or wide stock. Metabo put all the user controls in Red (power, bevel, miter, head locks etc.) a simple but nice detail. Resetting a miter or bevel angle has a tight, precison feel. Even the fence slides have a precision feel to them.

To sum up - it is obvious the Metabo put a lot of thought into the details of this saw. This is a heavy tool with a precision feel. So far the accuracy is very good. It is not cheap but I found the price can vary significantly between dealers. Metabo is currently extending the normal 1-year warranty to 3-years when registering online.

I recently purchased the 14.4 Milwaukee Lok-Tor drill via the internet for $150. After having used it three times, I would have paid considerably more knowing what I know now. The drill has tremendous power (more than my previous 18 volt drill), has excellent balance (feels like a drill should), provides excellent control, and shows quality throughout. I had checked out other drills at the local hardware stores and had narrowed my choices to Milwaukee and Bosch. I finally chose the Milwaukee because of the higher torque, longer battery life, and a better warranty.

This was exactly what I needed to restore a great and useful tool that was just too good to throw away.The price came down to what I thought was reasonable ,perfect for me.I like being able to get what I need in the tool line without running all over. We live in the mountains and nothing is handy. It is 30 miles to even a Wal-mart.