Best Dedicated 3/8" Impact Wrench? Not close

[Music] welcome back to the torque test channel today we take a look at dedicated 3 8 inch impact wrenches to see which might be the most cost effective option for the power they're delivering using four different examples today from your local hardware and tool stores and i mean dedicated as in each tool here is only offered as a 3 8 inch drive size there are of course 3 8 inch versions of popular half inch impacts like compacts and mid torques which we found to sometimes be quite good really but most of those models we've already tested in their half inch form there does seem to be a market out there for a trusty 3 8 inch side kick that many of the top brands cater to by offering a usually shorter length and especially smaller body to easily carry around and perform day-to-day tasks like top of the engine sort of stuff all these tools say for one oddity today advertise about 160 foot-pounds cost around the same but deliver very different performance as we'll find out starting out here with the ryobi oneplus hp psb iw01b which sells for 119 dollars bare and well as low as 99 dollars for a kit sometimes which we've seen before our brushed ryobi mid-torque cost less when we bought it as a kit compared to buying it bare so maybe not a rare instance so that one we also awarded a 99 price point on our ranking this is part of ryobi's hp line which means a brushless motor and usually they're top tech but in this case the tool isn't sporting terminal pickups for their fancy battery communication something they do with many of their lower cost hp tools so battery type might not make as much a difference as it does with the tools that have those terminal pickups we'll do some testing towards the end of this episode to find out for you since ryobi doesn't sell a straight up compact dedicated impact line this is sort of it at 5.43 inches long it certainly qualifies the smallest and shortest on the day what's very much not the smallest or shortest or heck even brushless is our next contestant the harbor freight earthquake eq38xt-20v which sells as a kit for 135 dollars and isn't sold bare the earthquake is a full 6.7 inches long thanks to its brushed motor but advertises the same 160 foot pounds as the ryobi hopping first from the home depot's ryobi to the harbor freight we're now going to visit the blue box store lowe's with the craftsman v20 3 8 impact cmc f910b which is again 99.165 foot-pounds now the craftsman is intriguing to us because the last impact wrench from the v20 line we tested was very similar to the dewalt current generation dcf 894 mid torque for less coin and yet the last impact driver from craftsman we tested was a bit of a letdown in performance in spec's honesty so we're hoping this impact wrench brings things back to that happy place and considering the 5.7 inch length and rpm and ipm and torque rating of this 3 8 not really matching any dewalt current 3 8 we're familiar with like the dcf 883 and 890 being higher rated than those traditional tools do we have something from craftsman now that's actually unique is that a good thing we want to know finally our last stop on the 3 8 train we're going to be circling back to harbor freight for another brush model this time from bauer a tool some of you in the comments have not relented about testing this is the most perplexing and strange tool of the bunch today in our opinion this 1783c be is both the cheapest on the day at 70 and advertised as 325 foot pounds are they for real i mean i know this is 6.5 inches long so it wouldn't be insane power for some brands this size but this is a brushed harper freight cordless after all those figures are of course both breakaway unlike the rest of the specs we've been showing today but in true harbor freight fashion this is one of those tools they chose to leave the working or tightening torque off of no fastening spec at all so unless this somehow does make 325 that's gonna hurt it today on our new dedicated 3 8 inch rank chart so let's find out our first test is called working torque five seconds and forward as a reminder all the impacts we purchased for today's episode were financed by you guys watching these episodes and purchasing our teas sweatshirts and rank charts here's the harbor freight earthquake 119 foot-pounds doesn't sound like a whole lot then again we don't have a lot to base this off of yet so here's the ryobi hp 131 foot-pounds now putting out a bit more despite dimensionally being a bit less though that battery design makes offering something truly compact in the ryobi line a bit difficult we feel hanging off the end there is probably going to get in the way now for the craftsman brushless v20 168 not huge numbers yet but building quite a gap that craftsmen so far looking more like their comparatively impressive wrenches rather than their drivers last up with the bauer from harbor freight shown in white on screen only 126 so far and i say only because well they did slap 325 on the side of this thing it's got a long way to go in the coming tests to reach that and to be honest we feel despite this being the lowest cost impact today its 70 price point is also a bit bogus why is that because we own the bower impact driver as well and let's be honest for a second these two tools are the same like identical say for just one of these stickers and a hex call it rather than 3 8 drive anvil same weight injection molded body and everything yet the driver was only forty dollars or about fifty seven percent of the cost of this three eighths just because of an anvil change and despite this parody they're calling the driver 1300 inch pounds or 108 foot pounds and this one's 325 definitely some fuzzy math or marketing going on over there at the old harbor freight but that bower did score quite well for itself and did make some real power for us so let's see how this is able to ratchet up things on longer tests our second test is called max torque 10 seconds in reverse here's the ryobi taking on the harbor freight earthquake 183 over 171 that ryobi is still coming out ahead now let's see if the craftsman can build on its own lead over 200 now 205 from the v20 good stuff lastly the bower which in driver form was pretty potent so eliminating those hex adapter losses let's see what she can do 206 every bit as potent as the craftsman and then a little bit more in this test the driver made as high as 166 in this same test length so that gives you an idea of how much you're losing from a hex collet and adapter hardware in performance which we've also seen measured with similar results with man caver tools as frankenstein anvil swapped to milwaukee in that episode alright last test best case scenario 15 seconds they're best run on screen with a freshly charged battery here's the last chance four points from the earthquake in rio bhp 201 over 186 these tools seemingly having a predictable relationship with each other now for the craftsman to try for that number one spot 230 a nice bump up from its last max torque run and now for the budget brushed bauer behemoth that's 223 matching much of the craftsman's power delivery but not able to put up the same kind of numbers before we revisit the ryobi to see what effect its other batteries have without that hp battery communication let's head over to our rank chart and fill in these new four purchases to see where they stack up in this new category their power runs are recorded here and like on our driver's rank chart which we surprisingly see similar levels of torque to these their runs are divided by 5 instead of 10 here since those figures are so close so that's 24 34 and 37 for the earthquake not too great 26 37 and 40 for the ryobi 34 40 and 46 for the craftsman that's quite good and 25 41 and 45 for the power also pretty decent the earthquake is the longest so it'll fit in the least number of places and made the least amount of power today so it gets dinged with 27.8 foot-pounds per inch here the ryobi is much shorter and made a bit more power 37.4 the craftsman is short-ish and made a lot of power 40.4 and the bower quite long to 34.3 points for torque claims all of these tools made their claims and then some full marks for 100 points each for the bauer it's another story if they advertised any other figure other than that 325 it would be helping its case here but 69 or 69 points if you have an idea of what we should do other than use the 325 figure here let us know below i don't know multiplying it by 0.8 since loosening is 20 easier not sure then for price as a function of power we get 31 30.8 34.9 and 47.8 points in this column the earthquake using the same process we use to determine earthquake high torque bears price in that episode that totals 253.8 271.2 295.3 and 262.1 putting the craftsman up into first place the ryobi second bauer third and earthquake at the bottom which is honestly how i would personally rank these tools as well a dedicated three-eighths should be small otherwise what's the point of owning it over another midsize option that also brings a lot more punch that ryobi a bit of a physical constraint making tools smaller with a battery shape like that though and while it's hp it's not using that hp battery communication so does that communication really matter on tools this power would adding communication really bring more umph to a motor size these are rocking here's the ryobi with a 3 amp hour p195 hp pack which uses 21 700 cells the pack overall we've had the best of luck with in this size range remember this tool made 201 in its bcs test so 203 up from 201 with very similar curves i'm going to go ahead and call that nada as we see easily that much variation between runs on the same battery now for the gen 3 4 amp hour high performance ryobi battery which is their latest tech so 211 over 203 and 201 i mean sure we could call that on the curve and increase we weren't able to see that kind of curve and peak with other batteries but not the kind of difference we're used to seeing with larger hp tools that do have the battery pickups so i wouldn't get too caught up in what type of battery you use on this type of tool or maybe other small hp tools in general that remains to be seen the craftsman v20 seems to be the buy from today's testing it's 99 bucks it impressed us a lot it's much smaller and shorter than the sometimes comparable inpower bower might be a unique design to the v20 line and not just a dewalt copy who knows and in day-to-day use we've been using it and it has been able to take off some caliper bolts and other tasks that we were surprised that sort of a budget three-eighths like this can do we think this one hits above its weight and it's some nice redemption after the last v20 we tested their driver which we were less impressed with i appreciate you joining us on this quadruple head head click like because algorithm find the winner in a link below and thanks for watching [Music]

Channel: Torque Test Channel

Views: 81,096

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Id: 5iheNYkFZM0

Length: 14min 43sec (883 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 15 2022