Which? report : Cordless drills | 01 April 2007Best Buys
Take the hard work out of DIY with one of our six Best Buys. Amazingly, one of our Best Buys costs a mere £26!
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It's easy to make a mediocre product look good by tarting it up with fancy extras like pop-up lights or spirit levels to impress the unwary.

The Best Buy drills have none of these bells and whistles but instead score highly because they concentrate on excellent drilling and screwdriving.

None of them is cheap but - with the exception of the Wickes model - they all aced our endurance tests, so we reckon they'll give you at least ten years' trouble free use.






Best Buys Ryobi CDI-1803
Price: £80
Score: 83%
The 18V Ryobi is a classy cordless drill with lots of good features.

It has three gears and a top speed of 2,200rpm, which gives it extra oomph to tackle hard surfaces. It's also the best choice for hammer drilling in tough materials such as concrete.





Makita 8444 DWDE3
Price: £282
Score: 82%
This 18 volt Makita drill impresses across the board. Its hammer setting and excellent battery life mean it’s a great choice for tough jobs like drilling exterior walls.

This drill stands out from the crowd in having three gears. This lets it deliver an impressive top-speed of 1,700 revs per minute – higher speed makes it easier to drill hard surfaces – plus two slower gears which give the necessary control for precision screwdriving.





Metabo BSZ 14.4 Impuls
Price: £200
Score: 81%
The Best Buy Metabo BSZ 14.4V Impuls gives first-rate screwdriving results and excels in most drilling tasks – its only flaw is when drilling metal, but it’s top-notch otherwise.

This Best Buy Metabo drill combines impressive technical capability with thoughtful design. It’s easy to use – you can swap drill bits quickly and easily, for example – and it’s well-balanced and not too heavy.





Metabo BSZ 18 Impuls
Price: £220
Score: 80%
From the same family as the other Metabo Best Buy, this drill has a bigger battery. While this adds a little to its weight, the drill is comfortable and well-balanced.

With this version, drilling is excellent across the board – it copes far better with metal surfaces than the other Metabo – and is great at screwdriving too. Plus, our testers rated this as one of the easiest drills to use overall: switches and buttons are easy to control, changing drill bits is simple and the recharging unit is efficient and easy to understand.





Worx WX14DD
Price: £45
Score: 71%
Choose this cheerful orange Worx Best Buy drill and you’ll have few complaints – and a happy wallet.

It drills beautifully in stone and wood but like the Metabo 14.4V it struggles a little in metal. It is a great screwdriver, too.
Wickes SKU 167213
Price: £40
Score: 56%
This Wickes 18V drill is the king of the DIY-shed own-brands and at just £26 is stupendously good value. Its hammer drilling is on a par with the dearest we tested and there’s little to fault with its normal drilling – in stone, metal and wood – either.

Two gears means it’s able to switch to a lower speed when screwdriving and its battery life is better than average, too. Encouragingly, while the usual trade-off when you buy a cheap drill is a frustratingly early demise, this drill lasted reasonably well in our demanding endurance tests.






Don't BuysWe found four models that will turn your DIY session into a nightmare. Most are cheap but in these cases you get what you pay for.

The Spear & Jackson SJ-CD18KUK, £43, fails as its speed is too low and it lacks turning power.

Battery life is poor, too; it drilled just 39 small holes before conking out. And, once it's done, it takes up to five hours to recharge (the average is an hour or so).

Worse, it stopped working about a third of the way through our endurance tests so the chances are you'd be throwing it in the bin before too long in any case.

The Wickes Pro SKU 167237, £120, proved very disappointing. It gained excellent results for drilling, proving particularly impressive in stone, and was good at screwdriving, too. But, the main problem is that the drill came a cropper in our endurance tests. Therefore, we don’t recommend you buy this drill.

We also found problems with the Black & Decker CP 142KB, £67. Frustratingly, it’s really good at drilling and screwdriving but we discovered some serious flaws with its battery. The capacity is low, so it won’t last long. And, while most modern drill batteries can be recharged in about an hour, it takes several hours to recharge this one, which could pose problems if you have lots of work to do. This might be why Black & Decker provide a spare. The other big problem with this drill is that it broke down early in our endurance tests. This isn’t a good purchase if you want a drill you can rely on for several years’ work.

We also think you should steer clear of the Argos and Homebase own-brand Challenge CDT P19180 cordless hammer drill. Its hammer drilling is very poor – it’s among the worst we’ve tested. Its normal drilling isn’t great either. The drill gained an acceptable result drilling in stone, but was hopeless on metal and poor on wood mainly because, with just one gear, the drill can’t generate enough speed. There’s no compensation when you come to screwdriving. The results for metal were very poor and not much better in wood, which is the substance where most drills can manage a decent result.

Battery life is poor and no spare is provided. This is particularly annoying given that the battery recharge time is five hours.

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www.craigthehandyman.com Wilmslow / Alderley Edge

strangly, they have put a pro makita in with under £100 drills

these are all the ones they tested
https://www.which.co.uk/reports_and_cam ... _59503.jsp

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www.craigthehandyman.com Wilmslow / Alderley Edge

i used to get which but it was the same every month. as for their drill tests, none of them test longevity. they cant. the same as all these mags tests.

it does say this

"we delegate the work to some specially programmed machine rigs which run repeat drilling tasks for nearly 3,000 cycles to check the motor, plus 300 repeat impacts to check general build quality"

its a start i suppose, as it did find some makes to be more rubbish than others

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www.craigthehandyman.com Wilmslow / Alderley Edge

if the ryobi is a classy drill why does it feel like crap?
its good value i suppose.

Hey, I've got the Ryobi (altho' the 2 speed version), so what you talking about :evil:

Does it feel crap?, dunno, cos I've hardly used it in the 2 months I've had it

My brother in law has a Ryobi and I had to use it last week, to be fair it does feel like a toy compared to Bosch or Dewalt and it gets damn warm during use!

Why do Which mess around testing things like this, just give the drill to a 10 year old kid and if you get it back in working condition then you know it is a good one

I'd quite like to test powertools, the only problem is that if a firm sent me one and it was crap, I would tell everyone it was crap and I guess that may put some firms off

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DIY | Donnas dream house

i think it would have made more sense to test under £100 drills as a group, then £100 up as a group. With the £100 up drills, times the test by 10, as they may well be used by trade.

Mixing the 2 groups is stupid

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www.craigthehandyman.com Wilmslow / Alderley Edge

They should send them to me to test. I doubt they could be used in a harsher enviroment 8-)

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Why isn't the number 11 pronounced onety one?

You are right, it makes no sense at all

Perhaps there was some money involved along the way

Next week they are testing sports cars.

They have Merc, Porsche, Aston Martin and Skoda

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DIY | Donnas dream house

They might send you an Hitachi :grin:

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DIY | Donnas dream house

Nah, got one

I remember asking for a power drill once, the boss went to B&Q and came back with a green Bosch.
Lasted 3 days

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Why isn't the number 11 pronounced onety one?

I had a Green Bosch one and it lasted 8 years, then one day it went to powertool heaven

Then I bought a Perles ( I had never heards of them) cost me £120 in 2000 and it is crap, I use it as a mixer now as it is 1050w and for core drilling.

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DIY | Donnas dream house

We had a perles lasted about 3 years of abuse.

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Why isn't the number 11 pronounced onety one?