Just understand here is the basic hierarchy:

1 - Festool, Hilti, Mafell, and probably a few others you've never heard of. These are ultra high end tools only meant for those doing super-precise work and earning a living using them.

2 - Milwaukee, Bosch, Makita, and Dewalt. These are generally considered to be the good stuff, and most contractors will be using one of those four. Which one you choose will typically come down to price and/or which manufacturer offers the most tools that you need. You really can't go wrong picking any one of them, although I would personally nudge Milwaukee and Makita above the other two by a very narrow margin...not enough for a typical user to notice, though.

3 - Ridgid, Kobolt, Craftsman, Ryobi. These are your better homeowner tools. If you are pulling out your tools a couple times a month and that's it, These will all work very well. I'd personally lean either Ridgid (for the excellent warranty) or Ryobi (biggest tool lineup and very affordable).

4 - B&D, Skil, Hart, Bauer. These are your absolute bare bones tools. Absolutely serviceable for a lot of people who just need a couple of tools to put RTA furniture together and hang curtain rods and the like. But you will never see a contractor using any of them.


I personally have a lot of Milwaukee, some Ryobi, a couple Makita, Dewalt, and Festool tools, and I recently got a huge kit of Ridgid tools from my niece who works for Ridgid and sent them to me for free in exchange for some honest feedback. I'm a pretty serious user of tools (I have a side handyman business as well as all my personal projects) and I can definitely tell differences between the tiers of tools. But I expect most users never would be able to tell the difference, at least between what I listed as tier 2 and 3..