Last week YouTuber Sean Carlin Designs unboxed the new Hercules 20V drill and impact driver from Harbor Freight. He promised he’d compare them to Dewalt cordless tools and he delivered on his promise this week with a new comparison video.
The premise of the video is if one should buy these new Hercules 20V tools? He said he wouldn’t buy the tools. Not because they are no good but because they are not priced low enough to sway buyers to buy these instead of the real deal Dewalt tools. I agree with this since that’s basically what I said when I first wrote about the new Hercules 20V tools.
The thing about Harbor Freight is that we the consumers expect lower prices when we shop at Harbor Freight. We certainly don’t expect the best of the best when we go to that store but we expect decent products at low prices. The Hercules tools change things as they are now offering what seem like quality tools (too soon to say if they are or not) and although the prices are low compared to the real pro brands like Dewalt, Makita, they’re just not low enough to make someone like me to purchase them over Dewalt when I can buy a real Dewalt product for a little bit more.
Back to Sean’s video, he made a trip to Lowe’s and found a Dewalt 2 tool 20v combo set which offer a drill and an impact driver, 2 batteries, charger, and bag for $159 USD! So basically he summed it up, why pay a total of $209 (which is the sum of buying the Herculess 20V drill and impact driver together) when you can buy an actual Dewalt set for less ($159)? The reason most people go to Harbor Freight is to pay less but that’s just not the case with the new Hercules tools at the moment.
I agree with his statement however the comparison is not exactly apples to apples. The Drill in the Dewalt kit is Dewalt’s DCD771 budget drill (less power, larger body, heavier, less features) and the included batteries and charger are also their budget bottom of the barrel models (small 1.3ah battery capacity vs the 2.5ah on the Hercules and the included Dewalt charger is very slow). The impact driver is not their budget model but overall the $159 Dewalt kit is a stripped down kit with less than what you’d expect from Dewalt. The Hercules drill is more comparable to Dewalt’s brushed compact drill the DCD780 which is leaps and bounds better than the budged DCD771 drill found in the Lowe’s $159 set. Some might argue the Hercules 20V set has better features than the $159 Dewalt set and might be willing to pay more for the extras such as larger capacity batteries, faster charger, better drill, etc.
Performance
In the video Sean compares the Hercules impact against a Dewalt 20V brushed impact and the two are very similar and both drive a same sized screw at the same rate. Then he compares the Hercules to a Dewalt brushless 20V impact driver and the Dewalt drives the same sized screw just a tad bit faster than the Hercules although I’d say the results were very similar.
So at least the Hercules 20V impact driver is on par with Dewalt when it comes to performance.
A big thanks to Sean Carlin Designs for sharing the video with us!
DISCLOSURE:
Tool Craze does not sell this product or any product on the Tool Craze website. Tool Craze does not handle the sale of any item in any way. If you purchase something through a post on the Tool Craze site, Tool Craze may get a small share of the sale. Please refer to the About section for more info.
Leave a Comment