Cordless tools: the battery platform is the real decision

Some links on this page are affiliate links. HornCore earns a commission on qualifying purchases, at no extra cost to you.

Research. We have not settled on a platform here yet. What follows is how cordless lines are priced, which specifications mean what, and the order tools should arrive in on a new place. When a fence season and a winter have been through them, this page gets updated with the date.

Your first cordless purchase is not a tool decision — it is picking the company you will keep paying for the next ten years.

The battery is the product

Bare tools are sold cheap because the margin lives in the packs. A kit — tool, two batteries, charger — often costs about what two spare batteries cost alone. Once you own four batteries and a charger on one brand, every later purchase has already been decided for you.

That is fine if you walk in knowing it:

• Buy one kit to establish the platform, then everything after that bare.
• Choose the brand your nearest store stocks packs and chargers for. When a charger dies on a Saturday, forty minutes each way is the spec that matters.

Packs are a consumable. Lithium cells age on the shelf whether you use them or not — plan on replacing a set in the three to five year range. That, not the tool prices, is what a platform costs.

Volts, amp-hours, and what "20V MAX" means

Voltage is push. It sets how hard a tool can work. And "20V MAX" and "18V" are the same five-cell pack: 20 V is the peak reading off the charger, 18 V is what it runs at. Two brands, two marketing departments, one battery.

Amp-hours are the tank. 2.0 Ah against 5.0 Ah is runtime. Multiply to compare across voltages: 18 V times 5.0 Ah is 90 watt-hours.

What the listing leaves out is that a bigger pack also delivers more current. A grinder or circular saw on a 2.0 Ah pack sags, heats up, and trips its own protection. The same tool on a 5.0 Ah pack cuts better, not merely longer.

A 5.0 Ah pack also weighs roughly double a 2.0, and drilling overhead with one is punishment. Carry two sizes: compact on the drill, large on anything that cuts.

What cold does

Lithium packs lose capacity in cold: less runtime near freezing, and below that some refuse under load. The behavior is confusing — a cold pack reads full, dies in two minutes, then works fine after an hour indoors. It is not faulty.

The one that costs money is charging. Charging a lithium pack below freezing damages it permanently. A good charger senses a cold pack and waits; a cheap one may not. A pack that spent the night in the truck goes in the house first, not on the charger.

Do not store packs in an unheated barn over winter — inside, at half charge if they sit.

The tools, in order

1. Drill/driver and impact driver. Buy the two-tool kit, not one or the other. The impact driver runs fasteners and lags without wrecking your wrist, but it has no clutch, snaps small screws, and takes hex shanks only. The drill does holes and anything needing control; each is poor at the other's job.

2. Reciprocating saw. On a new place it pays out in a month — old fence, nail-embedded lumber, brush, pipe, a seized bolt. Keep metal and wood blades in the case.

3. Angle grinder. T-posts cut to length, rebar, stuck bolts, deburring, a wire wheel for rust. On a place putting in fence it ranks higher than most lists put it — read alongside which posts you are setting.

4. Inflator. Trailer and implement tires need one more often than a circular saw.

After that it depends what you are building. What is not first: a cordless mower, a brad nailer, an oscillating tool, or a cordless chainsaw — on 35 acres a gas saw does that. Skip the twelve-piece combo kit too: it exists to make the count look impressive, and half of it sits in the case for years.

Where corded still wins

Anywhere there is an outlet and the job runs long: a corded grinder for an hour of cutting, a bench grinder always ready. They cost less and they do not stop.

Cordless is for where the work is — the far fence line, the trailer, the roof. Buying cordless for the bench pays a premium to make a plug optional.

What we are buying

This one waits on a store rather than a specification. The article settles the procedure — one kit to establish the platform, everything after that bare — so the buying order is not what is open. The brand is, and it turns on which of them keeps packs and chargers on a shelf close enough to matter on a Saturday. When the kit is bought, the platform and what it cost go here with the date, and the batteries get added as they accumulate: how many, what sizes, what that came to. Which tool followed the first two, and which one we were certain of and did not need, is a longer entry and a later one. That tag outlasts all of it. Research stands until a fence season and a winter have been through the packs, because cold and use are what test a platform, and buying into one tests nothing.

Before you buy

• Pick the platform before the tool, and pick it on local battery availability.
• Start with one kit, then buy bare. A dual-port charger matters more than a sixth tool.
• Two pack sizes, not one. Compact for drilling, large for anything that cuts.

— Chris D., McEwen, Tennessee