Memes

There are no major tool brands just battery ecosystems with tool accessories

Unless you work a trade, I would go with Harbor Freight for everything except cordless tools. If you wear the Harbor Freight tool out replace it with something higher quality. For cordless, I don't know. I have Dewalt and wonder about others. I mostly avoid cordless now.

For trades, see what your coworkers are using. Do you want them borrowing your batteries? (No) Do you want to borrow theirs? (Do you want them to dislike you?)

For power tools just pick your favorite color and stick to it. All the big brands are the same except for their special lil' batteries. For everything else, buy cheap tools (Harbour Freight, garage sales, Amazon, eBay, etc.). When you wear them out / break them / otherwise need to replace them, that's when you can justify spending a bit of money to get good tools. Plus at that point you'll have a much better understanding of the tool and thus what you want or need for the tool to best serve you.

Or be like me and spend too much time/money finding a tool that might be good only to never use it because brain says, "I'm bored, find new hobby" every couple of business days.

For cordless power tools, look at the overall range and pick the one that has all the tools you want. Some of them run everything from circular saws to lawnmowers on the same batteries.

For hand tools and corded power tools, go out into the woods and beat your ability to be brand loyal to death with a shovel.

Not Porter Cable. I bought a PC cordless set as my first set because it was inexpensive. I was wrong, it was cheap. None of the cutting tools are square and 0 isn't 0, you have to fiddle with it to get it square. My oscillating tool died with not many hours on it. The orbital sander works great but tears through batteries, probably a quarter the life of my DeWalt brushless tool on the same mAh size battery.

I am on DeWalt now. A prior employer gave out DeWalt tools as safety awards, and then I worked for a subsidiary of Stanley so I got steep discount on DeWalt. It is crazy how much that stuff is marked up, but it generally holds up well.

I have some heavy industrial experience with DeWalt and Milwaukee 1/2" impact wrenches. Heavy usage, using it every hour for 12 hours a day 7 days a week. The DeWalts battery rails would wear and loosen, intermittently losing electrical contact. This was a problem with the tool, not the battery, so we'd have to replace the tool. The Milwaukees were smaller and lighter for comparable torque output, so less chance of repetitive motion injury. The Milwaukee batteries eventually shook themselves to death, breaking the plastic fastening locations inside the battery case requiring replacement of the batteries. It was cheaper to replace batteries over time with Milwaukee than replace tools over time with DeWalt.

Milwaukee has a larger variety of tool than DeWalt from my experience. I've encountered a few things that Milwaukee makes but DeWalt doesn't, like battery powered palm nailer.

It depends on what you're doing. Metabo makes the best angle grinders. DeWalt makes the most reliable hand drills. Milwaukee is affordable. Imo best bang for your buck is good used tools. S&K made the best rachet set in the world for a time. Starrett and Mitutoyo stuff used to be practically bulletproof. Most modern brands don't hold a candle to the quality of tools made 40-50 years ago

No matter what level of effort you'll be using... don't get the Walmart brand. Yeah, they're good for beginners and can handle the occasional weekend project. But even you don't use them enough to wear them out, the other dads/men will make fun of you for having the hardware equivalent of velcro shoes from the dollar store.

Honest answer: I started with DeWalt. Had issues. Went to Milwaukee. Never regretted it.

Fwiw i have adapters that allow the use of dewalt batteries with nondewalt tools

I made this decision when I purchased a house.... Or rather, the bank purchased it, I just live here and pay them instead of a landlord.

I went with DeWalt and I don't really have any regrets. I had one of the really basic 12v drills from them for like 10+ years. It mostly rattled around my car's trunk during that time. I've purchased two additional batteries for it, one was shortly after I bought it, so I'd always have a charged battery on hand, the other to keep on the drill. When I needed to swap, I'd just take the dead battery into my home at the end of the day and charge it overnight, then dump it back in the car the next day.

I used it mainly for computer stuff, since I work in that industry.... Racking equipment in server racks, opening computers, etc. Rarely did I need to actually make holes or anything with it.... The third battery was purchased when the original battery that came with it, stopped working. The drill and two remaining batteries still work fine, though I don't really need/use them anymore.

I might "donate" it to a young relative someday, for now it collects dust in my basement.

When I replaced it, I got all 20v DeWalt everything. I bought a pack of tools that came with a couple of fairly basic battery chargers, a couple batteries, a hammer drill, impact driver, reciprocating saw, oscillating tool, a circular saw, and a portable light... It even came with a carry bag, which was promptly tossed in a corner and hasn't been touched since, except to kick it further into the corner.

After a short while of owning the house, we added a small (additional) set of batteries... I think 3 more? And picked up lawn equipment that's also 20v from DeWalt. A string trimmer (aka a "whipper snipper"), and a hedge trimmer. I feel like I'm forgetting something... Oh well.

The odd man out, so to speak, is the lawnmower, we ended up picking up a DeWalt mower, but it's 20v/60v, so it will take either pack. We had all 20v so we just stuck with that.

Then, I think last year? DeWalt released a snowblower, but it's 60v only. So we had to get specific batteries just for that. The 60v ones are compatible with the 20v tools, but the blower will only take the 60v packs, so we have two 60v packs for it (and the lawnmower, I suppose, since they can take advantage of the extra juice), and 20v packs for everything else.

Everything is cross compatible, with the one exception of the snowblower, so we're all set.

My experience with the 12v drill heavily biased me towards sticking with DeWalt.

I won't tell anyone to buy DeWalt or Milwaukee, or any other brand. You'll have to make that decision got yourself. I don't have any strong feelings about other brands because I simply don't have the experience with them to have an opinion.... Except Ryobi. Fuck Ryobi. My brother used Ryobi for a long time, and he had nothing good to say about them besides the fact that their tools are cheap. They're cheap in every way. You'll spend more trying to keep them working than you'll spend simply by buying better tools. Don't do it.