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Comment by Tossrock | Hacker News Reader

If you want gold-plated, there's Hilti, but you're paying a lot extra for a marginal increase in reliability. Milwaukee, Bosch, Makita, and DeWalt are all in the same range, ie contractor/prosumer (and all mostly are manufactured in China). Ryobi is slightly lower but generally fine, ie consumer / price sensitive. Below that is Harbor Freight / no-name electric drill you'd find in am Amazon Basics "essential tools" kit.

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Seconded, though I've found the HF Hercules wired line pretty comparable to Dewalt.

But there's a fair amount of inter-model variety within those four/five brands. My 12v Dewalt impact punches above its weight/price and I have two Bosch 18v drills, similar in form factor but one is frankly inferior quality.

festool is up from hilti, maybe

WOW I've never heard of festool and hilti but simple googling has turned up amazing stores of their customer service. Unfortunately it looks like they don't overlap completely in the types of tools Ryobi offers.

I really like Ryobi's 18V and 40V 'ecosystem'. Every time I am browsing Home Depot or their website, I come across new items that are compatible with these two ecosystems.

Just recently I saw everything from 18V Ryobi Glue Gun to a Portable Power washer that can suck water from a bucket (eliminating the need for a hose) to even a portable soldering iron! Hell they even got a boombox ha ha!

For the 40V I saw cool things such as a portable power generator, lawn mowers, wet dry vac and even a portable refrigerator.

Its really cool that there are like a bazillion things that your existing batteries can plug into.

It’s probably Ryobi’s No 1 advantage, particularly as a lot of stores seem to stock a lot of the range (at least here in Europe).

Makita also has a large range but I usually have to order the less popular stuff but when I get it, it’s usually worth it.

And Mafell can be better than festool. Though different manufacturers tend to have different advantages.

Hilti makes some very large tools that if needed Festool does not have alternative. I have also seen a comparably priced Hilti drill/driver give up where a Makita kept going.

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