Metabo came out with some new brushless cordless drills last year, and I figured now was a good time to see if anything new has come out since.
Not much has happened in the Metabo drill/driver world, but I did spot some new offerings. Most are simply updated kits that include the latest and highest capacity battery packs, but I did spot a new Metabo 18V drill kit. What’s special about this drill is that it’s available at a lower price point than I recall ever seeing Metabo drills sell for.
Metabo came out with a reasonably powered and compact 1/2″ 3/8″ drill driver, and it comes with their Quick removable drill chuck, which attaches to the drill’s built-in quick-change 1/4″ hex bit holder. No-load speeds are 0-450 and 0-1650 RPM, and max torque is 531 in-lbs.
The kit comes with (2) 2.0Ah Li-ion batteries, an air-cooled fast charger, a side handle, case, and a belt hook.
And somehow, it’s still just $149. If there’s a catch, I’m just not seeing it.
Buy Now(Kit via Amazon)
Metabo’s previous compact drill kit, BS18 LT, is a lot more expensive – $271 at Amazon – and has a fixed drill chuck. It does come with higher capacity 5.2Ah batteries, as the kit with similarly sized compact batteries doesn’t seem to be carried by any of the Metabo dealers I checked.
Want an impact driver too? There’s also a new Metabo 18V compact drill and driver combo, for $249. This combo comes with a Metabo BS18Q drill/driver and SSD18 LTX 200 impact driver.
The impact driver looks pretty decent too, and offers 3 electronic speed and torque settings. It can deliver max torque of 1328 in-lbs, which isn’t impressive by modern standards. However, that’s still a very respectable torque rating, and the 3 speed settings raise this impact higher than competing single-speed models.
The only product description I could find for this SKU, US602217196, says that the BS18Q features a 3/8″ chuck. The product images for the BS18 drill and BS18Q drill in this combo are the same, which I checked by overlaying one over the other in Photoshop.
So either the drill is the same and one of the two product descriptions are wrong, or the BS18 does come with a 1/2″ chuck and the BS18Q in this combo comes with a 3/8″ chuck. If so, that’s disappointing. I’ll see if Metabo can clear this up for us.
Buy Now(Combo kit via Amazon)