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The pole saw is great, the just came out with a brush cutter head and a power brush that I will be getting

Had a Dewalt 18 volt drill/recip saw kit for years. Went with a big Dewalt 20 volt kit for my 40 year service award gift a couple of years ago. Have since added 1/2” impact, hedge trimmer and side angle grinder. Dewalt has an adapter to use the new 20 volt batteries on your older 18 volt tools!

I have had Stihl battery lawn mower, hedge trimmer and weed wacker for a few years now. I would never go back to gas for those purposes.

I wanted to hate the Milwaukee chainsaw

But I can’t, it’s great.

We just finished building a couple 6' x 400' piers with decks, stairs, rail and a 16' X 40' boathouse, all over saltwater. We ran almost exclusively Milwaukee Fuel tools. For a short time there was a roughly equivalent set of Dewalt tools. The Dewalt stuff got the job done when needed, but there is a noticeable difference in speed and power.

I Can't brag enough on the Milwaukee stuff. For instance the 1/2" drill / hammerdrill drilled hundreds of holes with a 5/8" X 16" auger bit, the 7/4" circular saw made thousands of cuts through dimensional lumber and the 1/4" impacts ran thousands and thousands of 3" stainless screws. Two of those impacts have also been on the bottom of the bay. It smokes the battery when they splash, but a freshwater rinse, some PB Blaster and they are still screwing off.

We didn't have a single tool fail over the course of two large projects in a really harsh environment. Needless to say the cordless stuff has changed the way we work. No more generators, cords, etc

The new generation drill and hex driver are supposed to be insane.

Tool porn. Gotta love it.

I use Makita 18v and Milwaukee 12v. They all work great. My Makita multi tool gets used a lot. Love it.

I can tell you from experience that the Milwaukee impact driver (and battery) will outlast the Ridgid impact driver about 8 times. The tool doesn't hold up, nor do the batteries.

I feel I'm kinda stuck with very low hour 18V DeWalt stuff. The batteries sucked, need to replace with adaptors & 20v. The tools are just too newish to throw out.

But with a do over I'd go Milwaukee. A good friend builds pole barns & used Craftsman till Sears started splitting up & parts got iffy. He switched to Milwaukee & has had damn good service from his tools.

I ran a full kit of Dewalt 18v Ni-Cad tools commercially from 2004-2008. We bought a Home Depot brand for another set (forget the name, tools were red but NOT Milwalkee). We destroyed that set in 6 months. I had the Dewalt set rebuilt around 2010 and ran it for the next decade until I got their new 20v lithium tools. I love how much lighter and powerful they are, batteries seem to last forever.

My biggest disappointment has been the 80v Kobalt tools from Lowes. They stopped selling and supporting the whole 80v stuff a year after I got into them.

I use the Makita 18V LXT stuff.

I have both Milwaukee and Dewalt tools. Not much difference between the two, until you get to impact wrenches, then it's Milwaukee all the way.

My needs are simple so light duty stuff works fine. I began with a B&D 20v weedwhacker and added a pole saw, hedge trimmer, cordless drill, and lastly a pair of compressors for the cars. The first trimmer started giving me trouble after five or six years, so I replaced it. Everything uses the same batteries, and the batteries are all still working fine. I think I have about six now, and have purchased tools sans the battery to save money.

When I needed an impact wrench, I looked at the reviews and went AC.

That’s what I have used for five plus years. They work fine for me.

I have all MIlwaukee. I have 18v as that's what they had when I started buying them. They have a 5 year warranty. I've had to send in 2 tools for warranty repairs. That couldn't be easier. I got on their support page and entered the info for a repair. If you registered the tool, the warranty info immediately pops up. They will email a prepaid shipping label so just box it up and drop it at UPS. 3 days later, I get an email that they have it. 2 days after that, I get another email that it's repaired and on the way back.
I sent them a drill with a trigger problem and they put a new chuck on it while they had it.

DON'T FAIL TO REGISTER YOUR TOOLS. If you don't, the 5 year warranty is worthless.

I finally picked up a dewalt 20v chainsaw, that thing is impressive!

It is hard to beat the lifetime Rigid warranty on everything including batteries. I do, however, love my Milwaukee impact wrench. It is a beast.

Dean

I have an old Rigid drill and recip saw combo. It came with 2 batteries and after a couple years both died. They had a non-standard type of batteries and Home Depot quit making them so they weren't replaceable. I think all the Rigid tools now use the same batteries. In the meantime I switched to Milwaukee and won't go back.

Ditto here........just a DIYer......