Choosing the Best Drill or Driver

Choosing the Best Drill or Driver to meet your jobsite needs can be confusing and frustrating. The power tool manufacturers love to bamboozle us with various brand new features and benefits, higher speed and torque ratings, bigger capacities and new cordless batteries.

For the Best Drill or Driver you need to factor in the type of power tool you’ll need.

Will you be drilling into concrete or just wood? Will you need to drive small screws into soft woods, or large construction screws into hard woods? What’s the best type of drill or driver for the job?

First off, watch our video below explaining each type of drill we’ll be covering:

Drill or Driver - What's the difference?

Our aim is always to make the process of choosing a power tool as easy as possible, so here is our guide to choosing the correct drill or driver.

The drills are split into typically 3 categories:

• Combi Drills
• Drill Drivers
• Impact Drivers

To find out more on each type of drill and what they are used for, you can refer to our exclusive guides:

• What is a combi drill?
• What is an impact driver?
• What is a drill driver used for?

Take a walk through our guide where we outline the basic spec you’ll need to consider before purchasing each model.

Combi drills have 3 functions:

1. To drill holes into wood and metal
2. The ability to drive screws
3. Drill holes into concrete and masonry via hammer funtion

Normally a combi drill will offer at least two, but sometimes three, speeds:

• Low speeds for hi-torque applications such as screw driving
• Higher speeds are for applications such as drilling metal or wood

Hammer functionality on a combi drill adds ‘blows’ to your drilling which allows you to drill into masonry. Keep eye on the construction of the combi drill. As you’ll be using it for more robust applications, you’ll want to choose a combi drill that’s very well made, with a metal chuck or metal gear box.

You can see all of the cordless drill drivers we have in stock right here, all of which are typically available for free next day delivery in the UK.

Here are our two favourites:

Drill drivers typically offer you two functions:

1. Drill holes into wood and metal
2. The ability to drive screws

The drill driver is similar to the combi drill only it doesn't have hammer function so isn't suitable for drilling in masonry.

Often they’ll be equipped with two speeds and multiple torque settings, although the torque won’t be as high as that found on either a combi drill or an impact driver. When choosing a drill driver, take note of the capacity of holes it will allow you to drill and also the top torque setting as this will affect the sort of materials you can effectively drill screws into.

Pay attention, too, to the battery supplied with the machine; the higher rated the Ah of the battery the longer the drill driver will run between charges. And the less charges you subject your battery to, the longer it’ll last.

You can see all of the cordless drill drivers we have in stock right here, all of which are available for free next day delivery in the UK.

Here are our two favourites:

An impact driver will be fitted with a hex chuck (or similar). This is a quick-release style mechanism that differs from the chucks found on combi and drill drivers. A hex chuck takes hex screwdriver bits as an impact driver is essentially designed to drive screws into tough work pieces. However, with the correct bit fitted, you can also undertake some drilling applications.

Impact drivers are all about hi-torque, coupled with high levels of impact. A typical impact driver will output higher levels of torque than even the top-of-the-range combi drill.

Again, when choosing your impact driver, take note of the battery fitted and over all construction of the power tool.

You can see all of the cordless impact drivers we have in stock right here, all of which are typically available for free next day delivery in the UK.

Here are our two favourite: