Porter Cable 18V Cordless Power Tool Reviews

This is a special guest review by Clayton. Clayton has been using Porter Cable’s 18V cordless power tools for about 3 years now and wanted to share his experiences with the system.

Introduction

I bought the initial set of these tools in November 2010. It included the drill, reciprocating saw, circular saw, worklight, 2 NiCd batteries, and a charger. A week later I bought the impact driver, as I was very curious about this ‘new to me’ style of tool. The following winter I received the angle grinder, jigsaw, and thermometer as gifts from family members.

My primary use for these tools have been in various home, auto and DIY tasks and projects. I bought a house a year ago and have made extensive renovations, giving me many opportunities to put nearly all of these tools through their paces.

Buy Now: via Amazon, via Lowes

Drill/Driver

My most often use for the drill has been for (go figure) drilling holes rather than driving screws or fasteners. It does a fine job overall. It has been dropped and abused, and it’s still going strong.

I was able to get one of the earlier models before they replaced the metal outside of the chuck with plastic. The newer models still have a single sleeve chuck, but I feel that the all-metal chuck might be more durable.

In use, it seems that the chuck’s jaws are just slightly uneven, resulting in a bit of wobble with nearly any bit I use; maybe the drill’s not so tough after all. I don’t know if that has always been there, but I only noticed it in the past year of use – I initially thought it was just a bent bit or two. The wobble hasn’t really affected my use of the drill too much though.

I used a diamond hole saw to drill a rather nerve-racking hole in an expensive porcelain sink, and the drill performed admirably. In use, with the cheaper NiCad batteries, it holds up long enough for any tasks I’ve put it through – even the long and slow porcelain hole drilling that I should have used a corded drill for.

See Also: Porter Cable 18V Li-ion Drill/Driver Review

Basic Specs

• 1/2″ single sleeve chuck
• 440 in-lbs max torque
• 2-speed gearbox
• 32-position adjustable clutch

Buy Now: via Amazon, via Lowes

Impact Driver

The impact driver has been a real eye-opener for me.

Of all my Porter Cable 18V cordless power tools, this impact driver has definitely seen the most use. This was my first experience with an impact driver, and I can safely say that I reach for it more often than my drill.

I have used it to run concrete lags, loosen lug nuts, and for plenty of general screw driving tasks. It doesn’t quite have the power to loosen tightly torqued lug nuts, so I use a breaker bar to start all of them and zip them the rest of the way off with the impact driver.

I have a set of Milwaukee impact-rated drill bits, as well as screwdriver bits (both of which I love and highly recommend), which are my favorites to use in projects. I know that running drill bits in an impact driver is far from precise, but in most scenarios I’ve been able to make it work.

Discuss: You can use an impact driver to drill holes, but should you?

The tool does feel a little heavy when paired with an 18v NiCad battery, but I have not had any runtime complaints until my batteries were well-used and ready to be ready for decommission.

My one wish is that Porter Cable would include the belt clip with their bare tool. This is a $5 part (that probably costs them a nickel to manufacture). Porter Cable, I’d gladly have paid the extra money for the convenience of quickly hanging it off of my belt or pocket. I have even used the impact driver as an ad-hoc hammer for some quick tasks and it just keeps coming back for more.

Basic Specs

• 1/4″ hex quick release chuck
• 1600 in-lbs max torque

Buy Now: via Amazon, via Lowes

Reciprocating Saw

I never really found myself wanting a battery operated reciprocating saw. To me, reciprocating saws are traditionally used for massive demolition work. A battery would only last 30 minutes in this thing, if that long.

However, then I found its beauty.

Since the reciprocating was bundled in the 4-tool kit I purchased, I decided to give it a chance. What I have found is that it’s great for the quick one-off cuts that would otherwise have required a trip to get my corded recip saw, an extension cord to run, etcetera.

Need to cut 1 pipe? A few 2x4s? A little tree pruning? No problem! This tool can certainly do more than just make a single cut or two at a time, but I have found that in most cases, that’s generally all that I need it for.

It works well, although I feel like it certainly feels cheaper and vibrates a lot more than my corded saw. My only major complaint rests with the blade chuck lock. It has a flip lever on the side instead of the more robust twist-locking collar.

I used to have a DeWalt recip with this type of flip lever locking mechanism, and when cutting into a plaster & wire mesh ceiling it promptly self destructed when it sucked a piece of wire into the tool in that area. There is a little tiny spring that holds everything in place (mostly plastic) and I believe it is poorly designed. Aside from this gripe, and acknowledging that I will likely never use it in a demanding or harsh environment I can certainly say the saw works well.

Basic Specs

• Variable speed trigger
• 0-3,000 strokes per minute
• 7/8″ stroke length
• Tool-free blade change

Buy Now: via Amazon, via Lowes

Circular Saw

The circular saw is an overall solid-feeling tool. It features a blade brake, a great safety feature that seems relatively rare for non-pro-grade saws. This is considered a right-handed saw, which is unusual for cordless circular saws, and although I may have preferred to have the blade on the left side for increased visibility, it works just fine.

The saw’s shoe is easy to adjust, and has been accurate enough for every job I’ve thrown at it. It has a very easy to see cut line indicator, though it is built of plastic and attached to the shoe.

This saw really started to perform once I replaced its included blade with a Freud/Diablo 6-1/2″ blade. With the better blade I was able to make much cleaner cuts, and was able to cut through more material per battery charge. The 6-1/2″ blade size is typical for higher-end battery powered circular saws, and provides a nice increase in depth of cut compared to other saws in this class and price range, such as Ryobi and Craftsman’s 5-1/2″ models. There were very few situations where I reached for a corded saw instead, as I never felt that 6-1/2″ wasn’t enough for my needs.

[Ed. note: 6-1/2″ blades are easier to find and blade style selection is better than with 5-1/2″ blades.]

Basic Specs

• 3700 RPM
• Bevel up to 50°

Buy Now: via Amazon, Kit via Lowes

Note: The bare tool add-on is available from Amazon and comes with a built-in laser guide, and a 2pc saw and drill kit is available at Lowes.

Angle Grinder

Realistically, this angle grinder has a 5-10 minute battery runtime, but it can do a great job in that time! I used the grinder to chop off some hardened steel nails, shorten up wire shelves, and for some quick wire brush/grinding jobs.

A few years before purchasing the 18v tools, I bought a corded Porter Cable angle grinder. Coincidentally, the cordless model is built very similar. It uses the same arbor wrench and has the same mounting accessories. It is very nice to have some interoperability between the two corded and cordless grinders. This is definitely a tool that feels like it needs a lot of power, but for short tasks it has really worked well.

[Ed. note: I purchased the same cut-off tool/angle grinder and can attest to its short runtime. Still, for $50, the tool is better built than I would have expected. It comes with two blade guards, one for use with flat cut-off wheels, and a standard blade guard for grinding wheels.]

Basic Specs

• 8500 RPM
• 3-position side handle
• Cast metal gear case
• Trigger-style power switch
• Accepts 4-1/2″ cut-off discs and grinding wheels

Buy Now: via Amazon, via Lowes

Jigsaw

I’ll admit, I haven’t used the jigsaw much. Its shoe seems to be built fine, but the adjustment/locking wheel is kind of a pain to use, as it’s at the rear base of the tool and is difficult to tighten. The jigsaw has a 3 position orbital settings switch on the left side, and a quick tool-free blade change mechanism.

I only used the jigsaw for a few projects, and it worked fine for all of them, but I don’t really have much experience with other jigsaws I could compare it to.

Most recently, I used it for some tricky cuts while doing some trim and finish work. A circular saw would have been inappropriate for cutting these small notches and detail cuts, but the jigsaw handled them well. Although my cuts were quick and small, I never felt there to be an issue with tool or battery power.

Basic Specs

• 0° and 45° bevel stops
• 3 orbital settings
• Up to 2500 strokes per minute
• Tool-free blade clamp and shoe adjustments
• Steel shoe
• Vacuum attachment port

Buy Now: via Amazon, via Lowes

Flashlight

The worklight’s incandescent bulb broke quickly, as has been the case with nearly every other tool-system incandescent worklight I have ever owned. Aside from that, it’s your average run of the mill packaged work light. A nice upgrade would have been an LED emitter, or an adjustable head, but it unfortunately has neither. I haven’t replaced the bulb, as I have many other flashlights available to use.

Thermometer

The IR thermometer almost seemed like a novelty item at first, but it definitely came in handy during the first winter in my new house. I had an unfinished porch that leaked cold air like a sieve and I walked around the room with the thermometer trying to pinpoint some of the worst spots. Once you pull the trigger, the thermometer samples the temperature of the area it is pointed at. As you point it around the room it projects a red (warmer), green (same) and blue (cooler) light, along with displaying the temperature on the back of the device. I haven’t come up with many other uses for it.

Related: Porter Cable 9V Infrared Thermometer Review

Basic Specs

• -22° – 590° F temperature range
• ±1.8° F accuracy
• 12:1 spot ratio

Buy Now(via Amazon)

Batteries and Charger

I am still using the 2 original NiCad batteries that came with my 4pc tool set 3 years ago. Lately I’ve noticed that one of them doesn’t seem to hold quite as good a charge as it used to, but I can commend their performance over this time. The batteries endured being dropped and abused on all of these various tools.

I find the NiCad batteries make the tools unnecessarily heavy, but this is a trait that all batteries of this chemistry share. I have come very close on multiple occasions to picking up a set of Lithium ions replacements, but have yet to pull the trigger.

The simple fact is that the NiCad batteries work just fine as they are, and while they do make the tools heavier, I can deal with this. A replacement two pack of NiCad batteries are priced at around $60 at Lowes, while a single Lithium pack costs at least $75 and requires their Dual Chemistry charger. My kit only came with a NiCad charger, so to upgrade to Li-ion I would have to pick up a new charger as well. I think I would prefer to buy the two pack of NiCd batteries and have a total of four batteries at my disposal, rather than upgrade to the higher-priced but more compact (and possibly lighter) Li-ion batteries. I can think of few situations where four batteries wouldn’t be enough to get me through a lengthy project.

Battery charging time is 60-minutes.

Conclusion

The big question here is whether I would buy these tools again (including those gifted to me). Absolutely! These tools are routinely on sale at Lowes and represent a great value in the not-quite-pro level of tools. I did many comparisons to Ryobi before making my purchasing decision. Aside from Ryobi’s amazing breadth of products, I think the Porter Cable line consistently outranks their Ryobi counterparts in quality, power, and durability while maintaining very similar pricing.