ryobi impact driver

5/4/20, 4:53 PM #1

Ryan
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Registered: 6/11/11

ryobi impact driver

Ryan

I'm considering buying an impact driver, don't need top of the line but do need something for periodic use. Needs to help me build a woodshed. I'm looking at Ryobi because of the battery warranty but would like some info. I'm in Canada so really only need warranty input from Canadian folks. 18v, 2Ah or 4Ah? Other options? Warranty hassles?

Re: ryobi impact driver

5/4/20, 6:49 PM #2

JL
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Re: ryobi impact driver

JL

Buy once, cry once. No, you may not "need" a top of the line tool - but you usually don't regret buying them later.

I've had good luck with Ridgid tools. I bought my driver due to the lifetime warranty on batteries and driver. That being said - if you want the Ryobi, go for it.

At least 18V - the more amp/hours in the battery, the better. It's nice not to have to worry about recharging but every so often.

Re: ryobi impact driver

5/4/20, 7:21 PM #3

Larry Clinton At Frankfort, (Central) Indiana
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Re: ryobi impact driver

Larry Clinton At Frankfort, (Central) Indiana

Don't know if you have had to use the Battery Warranty but it sure didn't work for me! I purchased their best combo set of drill and driver plus another smaller driver and extra batteries at Home Depot.

Took a few months and several tries to get them registered properly (a real hassle). Sooo thought everything was great and fixed for life on batteries - WRONG!

I can't remember how long before all the batteries went south but think if was about three years. Searched the net for proper procedure to have replaced - found that I would have to take them to a "repair station" or a store that "rented tools" so I called the HD store where I purchased them.

I was told to bring the complete package of tools, chargers and batteries inand they would take care of the issue. Great! I took them in with copies of all the paperwork. A few weeks later I called and they said that they didn't do the replacement and didn't have or couldn't find them! I drove over to the store -45 mile round trip and explained that I had given them to their customer service rep on so and so date and repeated his conversation.

They said he had quit and went to Alaska to be a State Trooper. They repeated the search and found them laying in the warehouse with nothing done. By this time I am more than a little agitated as I have $400 -$500 of tools that are inoperative.

Finally after a fairly long discussion with the store manager they agreed to replace the tools with another brand. I now have the same type tools of the Milwaukee brand. Of course they have no battery warranty!

I will NEVER buy any tool made by Ridged again!

- - -

I am 68 - be 69 in May 2010, have been retired about 4 years from Emerson Electric where I worked as a Engineer for about 40 years. Woodworking is my hobby, I refuse to do any woodworking for money as I am afraid it would become another job. I am very lucky to have a great woodworking shop. My son's and friends helped build it a couple years before I retired. It is a 30 X 30 shop with a 30 X 10 upstairs storage room, heated and air conditioned. I saved and purchased much of my equipment before I retired. I am busier now than when I worked, but seem to get little done :~>. I helped my son remodel his home, made all the woodwork from rough white oak, finished the vanity (from locust), lower kitchen cabinets (cherry) built cedar lined oak chest for my DIL, built a bathroom for my best friend and in process of building storage cabinets for SWMBO.

Re: ryobi impact driver

5/4/20, 10:33 PM #4

Kneale Brownson
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Ridgid battery guarantee is a joke.

kneale brownson

I've been thoroughly pleased with my Dewalt drill and driver, their battery life and their recharge tool.

- - -

I’m a fairly spry 82-year-old who had been a reader/participant at WoodCentral since the demise of Badger Pond. I started visiting BP to learn something about finish for a project I’d completed and became hooked on internet forums as a way of increasing my knowledge about all sorts of topics. I have been a moderator for a couple other forums on subjects I enjoy. My interest in woodworking began in the early 1970’s when my wife and I had contractors add to our house near Traverse City, MI, and I ended up doing the trim work to reduce mounting costs. I had no tools. I bought a P-C skilsaw, hammer, screwdrivers and one of those wooden miter boxes with a backsaw. I made trim for windows and doors from one-by lumber and started my woodworking career. At the same time, I started a 50-year career as a ski instructor. I got onto the night shift at a mental hospital so I could ski days, and spent my 30s and 40s with that schedule. I eventually replaced the PC-upside-down-in-a-board with a real table saw and began the purchase of enough equipment to fill a jam-packed 40-foot shipping container we used after we sold our property in Michigan. The ski instructing had taken us to Colorado and we were spending too much on maintaining utilities for two homes. A couple years ago, the dozen years spent at 10,000 feet of elevation was making my body produce too many red blood cells, so we had to leave my “forever” home in the mountains and we moved back to Michigan. Now I have to find myself a shop space for all those tools in the container.

Re: ryobi impact driver

5/5/20, 12:44 AM #5

David Weaver
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Registered: 5/10/10

Not being oppositional...

David Weaver

...I started with ridgid tools and bought them when they were on sale in packs. Drill and impact driver (typical small kit) were my first ones. Within two years out of that pack, I had a dead drill and a dead battery. Getting another battery cost me a lot of money back then (about 8 years ago or so).

After getting it and then having the drill fail, I was pretty pissed, so I decided that I'd find one of the light green ryobi drill and impact driver sets and I sold the other stuff used on ebay (the ridgid).

In 8 years, I've had the ryobi:

* drill (which has outlasted the ridgid by miles despite more use)

* impact driver (I don't use it much, but no trouble)

* pinner

* angle drill/close quarters stuff

* dustbuster type vac (the only tool my wife wore out - it's constantly running)

* leaf blower

* small toolbox style battery vac

* large 1/2 inch impact wrench

* small air pump

(all of the batteries still work - even the cheesy 1.3 ah batteries that come in the kits)

The dustbuster is the only tool that's given up on us but my wife is crazy with it.

I have read enough from farming friends to know that a lot of them like the milwaukee fuel stuff, but I don't know how honest they are about reliability. I'm sure they wouldn't like the cheap green ryobi stuff, and it does feel a little cheaper than ridgid, but it's cheap enough that when it croaks, I can just toss it. A farmer would probably break it quickly, but at least when they're buying the expensive stuff, they can write it off.

Which is what I had to do with ridgid (but in a different meaning for the same word), because as a younger fellow who believed that you could just keep a receipt (not if it's heat transfer, you can't) and take something back to the store - the warranty really isn't that easy to use, and you're still out a tool.

Getting a few tools and having batteries left over reminds me of inkjet printers and ink. That's the only reason everything that I have at this point is ryobi. If it had performed like the ridigid stuff did (I got a P-C brand cordless set somewhere around the same time as ryobi after it became a second tier brand, and it was truly junk, too - a drill with a chuck that wouldn't stay closed comes to mind).

Re: ryobi impact driver

5/5/20, 8:00 PM #6

Clint Searl
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Re: ryobi impact driver

Clint Searl

Gone are the days when Sears offered a lifetime guarantee on *some of* its tools, and would simply trade the dead for a new at the store.

Re: ryobi impact driver

5/8/20, 6:24 PM #7

Kneale Brownson
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1,031 posts

Registered: 8/1/07

Sears sold the Craftsman brand

- - -

I’m a fairly spry 82-year-old who had been a reader/participant at WoodCentral since the demise of Badger Pond. I started visiting BP to learn something about finish for a project I’d completed and became hooked on internet forums as a way of increasing my knowledge about all sorts of topics. I have been a moderator for a couple other forums on subjects I enjoy. My interest in woodworking began in the early 1970’s when my wife and I had contractors add to our house near Traverse City, MI, and I ended up doing the trim work to reduce mounting costs. I had no tools. I bought a P-C skilsaw, hammer, screwdrivers and one of those wooden miter boxes with a backsaw. I made trim for windows and doors from one-by lumber and started my woodworking career. At the same time, I started a 50-year career as a ski instructor. I got onto the night shift at a mental hospital so I could ski days, and spent my 30s and 40s with that schedule. I eventually replaced the PC-upside-down-in-a-board with a real table saw and began the purchase of enough equipment to fill a jam-packed 40-foot shipping container we used after we sold our property in Michigan. The ski instructing had taken us to Colorado and we were spending too much on maintaining utilities for two homes. A couple years ago, the dozen years spent at 10,000 feet of elevation was making my body produce too many red blood cells, so we had to leave my “forever” home in the mountains and we moved back to Michigan. Now I have to find myself a shop space for all those tools in the container.

ryobi impact driver

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