Credit:
Reviewed / Timothy Renzi
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Credit:
Reviewed / Timothy Renzi
Reviewed's mission is to help you buy the best stuff and get the most out of what you already own. Our team of product experts thoroughly vet every product we recommend to help you cut through the clutter and find what you need.
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The Milwaukee M18 Cordless Hammer Drill excels in tests, offering power, speed, balance, and essential features, making it a top-notch, premium tool. Read More
The Ridgid 18V hammer drill rivals Milwaukee's with excellent performance and value, despite some balance and handle comfort issues. Read More
The Dewalt hammer drill excels in concrete, with a unique LED light switch and great balance, though it's heavier with the 6AH battery. Read More
The Makita 18V LXT hammer drill is comfortable, well-balanced, and offers fine control, though it's slower on concrete and lacks an auxiliary handle. Read More
The Kobalt hammer drill offers decent performance for occasional use, though it lacks comfort and balance compared to other top models. Read More
Sometimes, you need to drive a hole through something that a traditional cordless drill can’t manage, and when that day comes, you’ll want to have a hammer drill in your hands. A hammer drill is a type of drill that features a “hammering” function. Essentially, a small impact is made on the back of the chuck, driving it and the drill bit it contains forward several thousand times per minute as you’re drilling. Doing so allows the drill to punch through materials that a regular drill can’t, such as concrete or steel, provided you are using a bit designed for heavier-duty applications.
We tested the best hammer drills at various price points to determine which ones work best for users who occasionally need to drive a lag into concrete or bore a hole through steel. The Milwaukee M18 Fuel (available at Amazon) is the best hammer drill for its power, balance, and ease of use. However, this drill is one of the most expensive we tested. If you’re looking for something that can still do a good job with occasional use at a lower price point, then the Ridgid 18V Cordless Hammer Drill (available at Amazon) does a great job with comfort and power for less.
The Milwaukee M18 Cordless Hammer Drill packs a powerful performance with exceptional speed and power.
Need a bit of extra stability for heavy-duty tasks? The Ridgid 18V has a secondary handle for additional comfort and safety.
The independent LED light switch makes the Dewalt 20V Max a cut above the rest.
Lightweight and comfortable
Overall power
Detailed speed adjustments
Missing core accessories
Be sure to consider what DIY projects you'll being using your cordless hammer drill before settling on one.
There are a few types of drill on the market, and before you spend the money on a hammer drill, make sure you know why you’re doing it. Hammer drills have more torque and power than a traditional cordless drill, but the real difference is the drill bit's hammering function. This allows you to drill through heavy-duty materials like concrete and steel, assuming you have the appropriate bit. That extra function comes with a price increase.
Do you ever see yourself needing to drive concrete lags into the basement wall or drill holes through steel angle iron? If not, then maybe you don’t need a hammer drill.
Likewise, a battery-powered tool isn't the best choice if you’re getting a hammer drill for increased power more than the hammer action, such as mixing tile mortar. You’ll want to upgrade to one of the larger, corded styles of hammer drills, or you’ll burn up the battery-powered tool's motor. So before diving in, consider your actual use case and get the drill that matches it.
Our advice is to buy a battery system and stick to it for almost all of their tools. It’s cheaper in the long run and easier to manage the batteries you need. However, if you’re investing in a hammer drill because you anticipate needing that hammering feature, then this is a tool that we might consider stepping outside of your battery line.
Going with your battery line makes sense for top-end brands like Milwaukee, Dewalt, Makita, or Rigid. While there are differences among those brand hammer drills, they all performed well and will do the job for you. However, if you invested in a platform like Ryobi or Skil, which makes a lot of otherwise good, affordable tools, you might consider stepping away from them for this one purchase. When you’re buying a tool because you need the power, then make sure the tool you’re buying has the power you need.
Keep in mind that many cordless hammer drills are versatile and can be used in numerous ways.
Most of the time, people use hammer drills just as regular drills. As such, it’s essential to understand how it will function with the mundane tasks of screwing and drilling into regular materials like wood and sheet metal. Once we had a baseline for the standard drill tests, we moved on to a heavier-duty test of the hammer drill function.
During all of these tests, we paid attention to the comfort, ergonomics, and overall usability of the drill.
The first timed test was screws. We drove six, one ¼-inch screws into a piece of 2x4, moving as quickly as possible between screws. Then we moved over to driving four ½-inch self-tapping sheet metal screws into a piece of 26-gauge aluminum attached to a 2x4 backer board.
The next round of timed testing was drilling holes into standard materials. Using a ⅛-inch metal and wood bit, we drilled six holes each into a piece of 2x4 and the same 26-gauge aluminum from the screw testing. Once again, we timed these tests with each drill.
Finally, it was time to differentiate these tools by seeing how they tackled concrete. We installed new 3/16-inch masonry drill bits into each drill, with a stop flag set at 2.5 inches to maintain a consistent depth. Then, we drilled four holes into a block of concrete available at our house, keeping track of the time. We also paid close attention to how much effort it takes to keep the bit cutting through the concrete.
As with the cordless drill testing, we decided not to test the longevity of the batteries because each package we had came with a different size battery, so we wouldn’t be testing comparable elements.
Jean Levasseur
Contributor
Jean Levasseur became a professional writer over a decade-long career in marketing, public relations, and technical writing. After leaving that career to stay home to care for his twin boys, Jean has continued to write in a variety of freelance roles, as well as teaching academic writing at a local university. When he's not reviewing tools or chasing toddlers around the house, he's also an avid fiction writer and a growing woodworker.
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