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You don’t need to be a remodeling contractor or professional woodworker to appreciate the many benefits of power tools. A trusty cordless drill will help you speed through a range of projects, from hanging shelves to assembling furniture. A high-powered pressure washer can blast away stains from decks and driveways in a fraction of the time it takes to tackle them manually with a scrub brush and elbow grease. And a capable circular saw is the only way to cut through large pieces of lumber, short of sweating for hours over a handsaw.
No wonder home centers and hardware https://www.uaepainters.com/ stores have aisle after aisle of power tools. That raises the question: Which brand is right for you? Having tested hundreds of tools over the last decade from all the major players, our experts at the Good Housekeeping Institute’s Home Improvement & Outdoor Lab are here to steer you in the right direction. For good measure, we also gathered insights from Roy Berendsohn, senior home editor at Popular Mechanics, our partner publication, as well as other experts in the field.
Ryobi
If you shop at Home Depot, you’ve probably seen this manufacturer’s products, with their signature yellow-and-black branding. Ryobi is one of two Home Depot–exclusive power tool brands, along with Ridgid. Our experts like the incredible breadth of Ryobi’s battery platform, which allows the same battery pack to be used across multiple tools. (The brand’s 18V ONE+ line has more than 280 products in all, and the 40V line has close to 100.)
“This is one of my top choices for DIYers,” says home improvement and lifestyle expert Kathryn Emery of Be The Best Home. “It’s nice knowing that the same battery that powers my cordless drill will also work for my leaf blower or the inflator for my kid’s bike tires.”
Lab pick: Although many Ryobi tools make our lists of winners, our experts were particularly impressed with the ONE+ HP 18V Brushless Drill and Impact Driver Kit, enough to make it a winner in Good Housekeeping’s 2023 Home Renovation Awards. “The drill has plenty of power for drilling into drywall and dimensional lumber, and the driver’s extra speed and torque is great for removing large lag bolts,” noted one tester.
Ryobi ONE+ HP 18V Brushless Drill and Impact Driver Kit
Lowe’s customers should check out Craftsman, since the big-box giant is one of the brand’s biggest retailers. After Craftsman was bought by Stanley Black & Decker in 2017, our experts have seen serious improvements to the legacy tool brand, which still offers some of the best prices around.
“You might even see professional contractors walking out with a Craftsman,” Berendsohn says, noting that its tools sometimes perform as well as their professional-grade competitors in Popular Mechanics tests. Although the bulk of Craftsman’s offerings are battery-powered, it also carries many corded electric tools, especially heavy-duty products, such as chop saws and grinders.
Craftsman V20 4-Tool Kit
Black+Decker
Another legend of the power tool industry, Black+Decker has been a trusted brand among our experts for decades. Although its small appliances — everything from toasters to coffeepots — have been in and out of the Labs the most, we’ve also been impressed by the brand’s power tools, especially given the affordable price tags.
“Approachable and easy to use, right out of the box,” Emery says, an estimation we’ve agreed with more often than not. That said, while brands like Craftsman and Ryobi can hold their own on a construction site (or at least with hard-core DIYers), Black+Decker tools are best reserved for light-duty projects, like drilling into drywall or refinishing furniture.
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Lab pick: Our experts are most familiar with Black+Decker’s cooking and cleaning appliances, like the Spillbuster Cordless Spill + Spot Cleaner, one of our top-rated portable carpet cleaners. The brand’s tools and accessories have earned praise over the years at Popular Mechanics, as you’ll see in this fun article, Why the Black & Decker Workmate Belongs in the Tools Hall of Fame.
Black+Decker Workmate Portable Workbench
Skil
Skil is the DIY spin-off of Skilsaw, a popular brand aimed squarely at professionals. Even though Skil power tools are competitively priced, they retain many features of their beefier brand mates’. That’s especially true when it comes to handheld circular saws, which Skilsaw invented in the 1920s. (For a long time, the name “Skilsaw” was synonymous with the tool, like Kleenex and tissue or Q-tip and cotton swab.)
To drive home those points, Berendsohn notes that “Skil’s $50, 15-amp circular saw was one of the best in our tests. If you’re only going to pull it out a few times a year and you plan to hire out heavier-duty projects, there’s no need to spend four or five times as much on an industrial-grade model.”
Skil PWR Core 40 Cordless Leaf Blower
Ridgid
Like Ryobi, Ridgid is a Home Depot exclusive aimed at DIYers, though its impressive performance across many categories makes it a good fit for “prosumers,” or homeowners who like to tackle big projects such as, say, building a deck or replacing their asphalt-shingle roof. “There’s going to be some gray area with all tool brands,” Berendsohn explains. “With Ridgid, the gray area is between prosumers and professionals, whereas a brand like Black+Decker leans more clearly toward DIYers.”
As with products from Ryobi, Ridgid’s tools are backed by Home Depot, which offers a Ridgid Lifetime Service Agreement on registered products, meaning power tools that break due to normal wear and tear will be replaced.
Lab pick: In our latest roundup of best shop vacs, we gave props to Ridgid for making the best heavy-duty option on the market: its 12-gallon model. The five-horsepower motor is capable of moving air at a rate of 140 cubic feet per minute — twice the flow rate of other shop vacs. Plus, the comfort-grip handle and 360-degree casters allow for easy maneuverability.
Ridgid 12-Gallon Wet/Dry Shop Vac
Hart
Most big-box stores have at least one exclusive power tool brand. For Walmart, it’s Hart, which the retailer began carrying in 2019. Walmart might not be the first place you think of for power tools, but “we’ve found decent value and performance in the models we’ve tested,” Berendsohn says.
Hart is 100% battery-powered, and its lineup is a bit more limited than other brands, especially those aimed at pros and prosumers. But if you’re looking for a capable cordless drill for light-duty projects or a sander kit for hobby projects, the brand is worth a look.
Lab pick: Among the Hart tools that Berendsohn and the rest of the testing team at Popular Mechanics liked is the 40-Volt Cordless Chainsaw, which was able to cut 46 hardwood discs. “To give you some perspective,” Berendsohn wrote in a Popular Mechanics article, “that’s as many as the DeWalt DCCS670 cut, even if that saw is twice as fast and built far more robustly.”