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Cordless tools have always had the seductive appeal of convenience, but they’ve also always played second fiddle to plug-in saws and drills in performance. They drill small holes and drive screws just fine, but when it comes to heavyduty jobs like sawing lumber and boring big holes, they just don’t have the muscle and stamina. But that’s changing. Recent developments in Li-ion (lithium-ion) battery technology make these batteries perform better than the NiCad (nickel cadmium) or NiMH (nickel metal hydride) batteries found in almost every power tool today.
First, lithium batteries are lighter. An 18-volt lithium battery drives about the same number of screws per charge as any other 18-volt battery, but weighs about half as much. Second, stored Li-ion batteries hold nearly a complete charge for up to a year if they’re kept in a cool area (not the trunk of your car). That’s twice as long as NiCads do. It’ll still perform even if it has sat unused for a month. That’s great if you don’t use your tools every day. Third, Li-ion batteries have no “charging memory.” NiCads that are repeatedly recharged after only partial discharges will “remember” and only allow you to use part of their capacity. Li-ion batteries, however, don’t care if you charge them for five minutes or park them in the charger all day. Nice when you just need to run in those last few screws and don’t want to wait around for a whole charge cycle. And last, Li-ion batteries can handle more than twice as many charging cycles as conventional batteries before they degrade. That means the batteries won’t need to be replaced as often.
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Li-ion powered tools aren’t cheap. They cost about double the price of NiCads. But given the advantages, they may be worth bucking up for. The battery expense makes it far more economical to buy a kit containing several tools with two batteries than to buy the tools one by one—if you can stomach the $700-plus price tag for a kit with a circular saw, reciprocating saw, drill and impact driver. But if your old cordless tools still work fine, put it off for a while. The prices usually come down after a few years.
This little 3.6-volt demon is no toy. It can
drive a 2-in. screw into solid wood without
predrilling. Keep one in the junk
drawer for those jobs around the house.
An 18-volt Li-ion battery is more than a full pound lighter than its
18-volt NiCad half brother—nice for nasty overhead jobs like this one.
Li-ion tools can do the big work. Until now, heavy tasks like driving
1-in. auger bits through joists, cutting dozens of studs to length and
hacking through nail-infested framing were reserved for corded tools.
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