Pro Tool Reviews: On the 4th day of Christmas, PTR gave to me, Makita tools to inspire jealousy! It’s day 4 and there’s only a week remaining until we announce our best tool and gear gifts from Christmas this year. For our top 5 best Makita gifts for Christmas, you might as well just get all 5 and call it a day.
6 comments:
It looks like we have got some good tool articles this week. This article really doesn’t have anything new, but it is interesting to see the tools that have been selected as the best Makita Christmas gifts are all cordless. Sure, cordless tools are getting better and better every day, but they still aren’t as powerful as corded tools. I wonder if power tools will still be in production 10, 20 years down the line. If we can get cordless tools to be just as good and then be able to produce and sell them for less money I suppose corded tools may be obsolete. I would love to create an unbiased timeline of tools technology. Currently those timelines are made by tool maufactureres to show how advanced they are, but I would be curious to see when the first battery powered tool was made, was accepted into the construction industry, and when the first corded version of a tool was abandoned (I’m assuming that would be the drill but I could very well be mistaken).
This seems like a pretty good gathering of tools. I do agree with Drew that it's interesting to note that all of these tools are cordless. The one that is of particular interest to me is the chop saw. I'm interested to see how well this tool can actually work without being attached to power. What does the battery look like on that thing? The article reads: "Makita takes the 18V X2 platform and brushless motor to give the saw performance levels that will make you forget your corded saw exists. Makita also sticks with their direct drive design – rather than a belt drive – making this saw noticeably more confident cutting through lumber. If your loved one has been extra good this year, this is the gift to get!" It looks like the article is pretty sure of the chop saw's power. The price isn't too bad, either. I'll have to keep an eye on this one.
What caught my eye immediately is how the first four of these tools are all very compact. It’s makes it a really great addition to any shop, an perfect to put under the tree. I like the cordless router not because it will stop you from cutting the cable, because I don’t think that’s as much of an issue as people make it out to be, but more so because it stops you from fighting the cable when it gets wrapped around the corner of your table or when you pull too hard it it unplugs. Nothing is worse and more dangerous than pulling on a taut cable and thinking you hit a knot or something in the wood, so instinctively you want to just keep going because the centripetal force of the spinning bit every time you lift to readjust makes it feel like it’s going to go out of control. So finally you shut it off and realize it was the cable all along.
UGH... Cordless tools. What a shame. The world made one good cordless tool and now every manufacturer had to ruin it by making all of them cordless. I just don’t see how this technology is cost-effective. The tools overall cost more money and you are restricted by the amount of charge you have. That all being said I think this article is stressing tools that would be good for a household. You know, the occasional project that requires you to pull out the tool once a month. I'll close this article like I do every tool article. I don’t think battery technology has been developed to the point where it can be incorporated into every shop tool. One feature that I would be very interested in is the capability to combine AC and DC to allow the user to switch between power and battery. This would especially be helpful in the case of theatre because of the sometimes obscure places that need to be worked on where wall power is not an option.
I think it’s funny that they’re phrasing this article in terms of the holidays and gift giving, when really it’s an everyday tool use list or a “you should buy these because they’re common and good” list. I, personally, would have these tools as my baseline toolkit and I think that’s what the article is trying to use as a reason to purchase and gift these tools to your “handy” friend. All that skepticism aside, I do like all the tools listed and think Makita has done a good job in the production of their line of cordless and brushless tools. I haven’t seen their three-pack yet with the drill, impact driver, and radio but I think it is kind of funny they threw in the radio (and just had to mention it’s not brushless) for their standard drill/driver set they’ve had for a couple of years. Makita is definitely at the top of their game this year.
I am a fan a Makita products and love that they put out some high-quality tools. However, I don’t buy cordless tools except for drills, generally speaking. I know they can be useful sometimes but generally you can get away with a corded product without any problems and be able to rely on it more because it doesn’t have that charge issue. Much like other commenters on this article, I just don’t think you need that battery power enough for you to actually get it and then deal with it when it stops holding a charge or isn’t charged. You have to buy batteries all the time; it just seems like a hassle. Also, why would anyone need a cordless miter saw? I’d say at most it might get moved around a shop or garage but you bring wood to it generally and it’s going to be by a wall more than likely which probably has power sockets anyways. These tools are all smaller too which makes sense to why they are on the Christmas list: they can go under a tree pretty nicely. However, it all just seems like a waste of technology and money but that cordless look or word appeals to some people, so I doubt it will be going away.
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