Harbor Freight's New Hercules DRILL vs M18 Gen 3 & 4

foreign [Music] welcome back to the Torq test Channel there's been two recent cordless drills introduced that aim to take away sales from the Milwaukee gen 3 and this is the first them the Hercules hcv92b the new brushless Top Model at Harbor Freight that displays in their stores say is basically a M18 gen 3 for less money and the next thing ticking on that would be the Gen 4 Milwaukee looking to replace that gen 3. advertising things like more torque to justify it so we're going to torque test these things to see what kind of peak numbers they do make on our Dyno brake then hook them up to our horsepower Dyno to see what kind of Watts they can generate at speed which is another kind of power metric that Brands like DeWalt use and we think it's a good one then use all that to rank them and see who really comes out on top we're still early on in our drill testing series suggest drills you think could top the charts below and will probably buy them so this is the latest brushless hammer drill driver from Harbor Freight and being brushless and Hercules that means the five-year warranty standard across the counter which is always nice and by the specs you can really tell they had a certain 2803 Milwaukee in their crosshairs on this one same 2000 RPM same 1200 inch pounds or 100 foot-pounds Peak torque and about the same weight as well the only thing really different being length with the Hercules coming in at 7.18 inches and the Gen 3 at 6.9 that gen 3 being one of the shorter 18 volt drills that exist in the market certainly at this power level now at the surface though the biggest difference between these two is you guessed it price the Gen 3 we bought for 150 bucks and the Hercules is 80. though as a kit like tested today that would be 240 out the door for the Milwaukee n197 put together for the Hercules so not as dramatic looking at it that way for the dough though the Hercules comes with a real Jacob's locking truck which I find quite decent and clutch settings that I find pleasantly clicky they're not bad really but the problem with developing your tools to take on the best-selling Milwaukee is that the model may be a bit of a moving Target that you're after and moving the goal posts back even further if the specs are to be believed is the New Gen 4 2904 and 18 hammer drill driver which has very similar specs to the first two here but just a bit of extra sprinkled on a little bit of extra red in the drill chuck ring here and in a rare move for Milwaukee lately a bit of extra length in the New Gen just a 16th of an inch though a smidge of extra weight as well and a one battery kit from the best we could factor in math wise here is 250 over the 240 of the previous gen with that comes 2100 RPM over the existing 2000 and 1400 inch pounds over the existing 1200 a very familiar looking drill here and I'd easily miss it even being a new model sort of a mid-cycle wreath by the looks of it but let's see if it goes beyond just looks in our drill testing series we test these tools how they are most commonly kitted out with battery wise and the next up in Battery Technology so basically high output here which Hercules has their version of then use both to score these tools our first stop is the dino brake which both perfectly matches a torque wrench and the salt torque for your drill when plugged into this thing as both Brands only advertise this one spec for power this should be pretty relevant to them though realistically the lower you gear your drill in RPM for this low setting the better it will do here and that leaves High mode just not rated At All by these Brands but I digress this is the 2804 with the included 5 amp hour battery 28.9 foot-pounds and here's the New Gen 4 these are median tests of usually about five runs [Music] 35.1 that's a big Improvement obviously not 100 plus foot pounds when you're tallying these things like they're saying these never are really but they advertised a 16 Improvement and we're seeing like 21 percent here here's the Hercules with a standard 5 amp hour battery 34.2 coming in below the Milwaukee but that wait that's the wrong Milwaukee this is supposed to compare to the first one and we saw this consistently with a 5 amp hour battery in this test let's swap to a 6 amp hour high output and see how things look we're using the 6 amp hour here because the cells inside are just better and the only M18 tool we've ever tested that has done better with the 8 over the six is the one inch big boy impact likely due to voltage sag using that huge motor alright let's see it [Applause] yes that's correct just going from an XC to an h0 bumps this thing up from 29 to 46 foot-pounds and here's how the Gen 4 does also 46 foot-pounds basically the same interestingly for Peak torque we're talking four inch Whole Hog stuff the Gen 4 is going to perform much better with an included battery but when both tools use high output no real change with this new model from what we can measure here's how the Hercules does with this high output type battery [Music] 42.8 quite good but not the humongous change from battery type we see with Milwaukee's and therefore lower here on a DeWalt dcd-99 for example we see it going from just 35 to 38 foot-pounds from a standard 5 amp hour to a 6 amp hour 21 700 cell pack like no other tools we've tested from this brand if you own a top of the line Milwaukee drill consider high output batteries not often something you'll hear us say that you really should be using but here you can park a bus in that type of Gap okay on to Watts let's start with high speed settings to switch things up watts is like a measure of work being done Peak torque is cool but these are not impact wrenches you're not doing much work at let's say 5 RPM right before these things stall out it's not often super useful for you to know that which is why Brands like DeWalt measure in Watts out which we try to continue on here across all brands and new to this Dino is a couple things one a big boy load tester that goes up to drawing 1200 watts it's pretty awesome and two an RPM gauge now which you can sort of track this process easier at home and follow along and high mode drills are measured for how many watts they can put up with until they stall out or RPM stumbles below one thousand that's often like half or under half of what they make in free speed higher speed drills have a wider RPM window to fall from lower speed drills are geared for it to fall much less from load increases here's how the Gen 3 does in this process starting out at 400 we're able to ratchet up the load on this tool and run it in high until we get to about 600 610 watts and the speed drops below 1000 RPM and it continues to drop so 610 watts is what it is now is that good by the numbers not really here's the Gen 4 to try and prove this type of attribute so the New Gen 4 with the same XC 5.0 pack and this high speed test takes it to about 630 Watts you can't keep the revs up after that not as big of an improvement as we saw with Peak torque down low that these things seem to be specked for last up with 5 amp hour packs is the Hercules and the Hercules Believe It or Not likes High quite a bit and it makes it up to 610 630 where the Milwaukee stopped and keeps on going up to 690 both 690 and 700 Watts cause it to dip below 1000 RPM super impressive for this tool I feel the high output batteries do well to close up that Gap the original gen 3 making up to 920 he has 920 Watts up from 610 now about on par with the DeWalt using these it's funny how much difference using a different battery makes on these tools that's insane the Gen 4 does about in stride with that in proportion to its last run and generates up to 960 near a kilowatt from this guy taxing those 21 700 cells it's very nice the Hercules is not as night and day with its high performance batteries but it still puts out crazy power yes from a Harbor Freight Tool still not used to this new sometimes reality I find myself in it makes 950 Watts 960 was causing it to fall much too fast that's a good figure for sure okay let's total some of these torque and Watts findings before we visit the dyno for one last go you can see what the dcd-99 does using the same process here and first up is their tool weight as purchased in kit form which starts them out in a deficit for their weights as negative 47 for 4.74 pounds negative 49 for this slightly heavier Gen 4 and negative 48 for the Hercules with its battery attached starting with Peak torque here's the figures we saw for each tool using a 5 amp hour battery and here's what we saw using the high performance battery options keep in mind not every brand will have those so this might be the same for each box here if they don't have something else a deserving points loss for those Brands like Bauer or Makita lxt for example I feel not offering those better batteries and by doubling these figures that's 58 and 92 70 and 92 big bump up here from using a base battery and 68 and 86. as a function of the tool length and combined foot-pounds of torque output here that's 108.4 for the Gen 3 116.7 for the Gen 4 and 107.2 for the Hercules here's the Watts they generated in high with a 5 amp hour and with the fancy packs here simple math here 61 and 92 63 and 96 you can see the generational Improvement in high here nice to see and 69 and 95. we can't total their watts per inch until we visit Watson low which is similar to the torque test but measuring work here instead of just stalling torque so let's do that then we'll compare their kit prices and finally total them all here more process just until they stall out below 300 RPM now which we found works best with this sort of setup the Milwaukee Gen 3 is able to do about 450 Watts which is again that's not great the Gen 4 was able to improve on the first figure using the included battery something that might be nice for most customers just buying these kits raising it up to 490 Watts the Hercules which is often the case now with its standard 5 amp hour battery is able to make an impression on the red boys who very much prefer those 21 700 cell packs it makes it to a full 500. while skipping the 500s altogether 600 610 Watts that's crazy when you put a high output battery for instance our favorite the 6am power on it that's able to improve to a massive 820 Watts changing absolutely nothing else in the tool just that battery though on the second figure was not able to improve on the 820 for whatever reason and in our case dropping below it with 810 which mirrors what we saw with Peak torque if you'll remember these tools made basically the same with high output batteries the Hercules alright I'm just going to pull the rug out on this one it beats both of them again yeah there I said it comes close to them in Peak torque but beats both of them in Watts a method DeWalt uses to gauge power and they do that probably because their tools do well using that metric but power at RPM you know where you'd be using the tool that makes some sense [Music] that's 45 and 82 points for the Gen 3 49 and 81 for the Gen 4 and 61 and 83 for the Hercules this whole time we've been wanting to compare to well we bought it to compare it to the Gen 3 but if anything this Hercules has been taking on the Gen 4 Harbor Freight didn't even know about this guy when they were working on this tool as a function of average Watts made here and Tool length that's 101.5 here 104 and 107.2 yes the exact same 107.2 as here that's using separate formulas on a different data set crazy a very balanced tool in torque and power at RPM dewalts favoring Watson Milwaukee seems to favor torque makes sense for a brand advertising watts versus a brand advertising torque so when considering all of this performance versus what it costs us to buy as a kit that's 123.5 124.5 for a similarly spec Gen 4 Ensemble and 159.5 for that not even that cheap Hercules when you buy everything you need totaling 716.4 747.2 and 787.9 putting yes the Hercules in the top Spot Not Just based on pricing either though not by a mile in this lead we haven't tested the most powerful drills ever made by several Brands out there yet so I don't think this is going to live at the top here suggest what you want to see ranked here as well but still we set out to see if we could match the Gen 3 that they say this tool does and I think they overshot the mark it more compares to the New Gen 4 I've been using both the past few weeks a lot of stainless Drilling in fact and the Hercules is very good just in use I think I may prefer the Gen 4 here if you already own batteries you probably already made up your mind anyways but I'm glad we could bring you this data either way appreciate you joining us for this one we make episodes at least every Friday click subscribe to catch those and thanks for watching oh foreign thank you

Channel: Torque Test Channel

Views: 143,076

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Id: 6mYsktjbLjs

Length: 15min 10sec (910 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 07 2023