I own and use a lot of cordless tools (primarily Makita 18v but also Ridgid, Ryobi and Milwaukee (12v). I have pretty much all the cordless tools I can foresee having a use for but there's a part of me that wishes I could start over from scratch. If that were to happen, I would undoubtedly buy the Milwaukee 18v line (preferably their Fuel line) even though I currently own not a single one of that particular line. That's because of my experience with their 12v line and excellent reviews in professional circles and because Milwaukee is the only manufacturer who makes their own motors and their own batteries.Mixam wrote: ↑Thanks for your post, I appreciate the input. I've never had experience using the LSA as I forgot to register my first Ridgid tool. I still love my nicad drill, aside from one of the two batteries dying, very happy with it. Even with one battery though it works great and the chargers for ridgid are fast. The old charger charged my battery in 15-20 mins from dead. When i still had two batteries, by the time one ran out the other was always charged.Ctrl-Z wrote: ↑ I stopped buying Ridgid tools some time ago when I discovered their lifetime warranty refers to whatever lifetime they want to assign to a particular tool. They generally don't make available a lot of warranty replacement parts once they discontinue a line of tools and your LSA eventually becomes useless.
I almost bought a few other brands since then till i read the reviews and found out how long the batteries took to charge. Some of the good brands also quick charge, although not as fast as Ridgid. But the ones cheaper or comparable in price take forever charge and have notoriously bad batteries.
Ridgid does really well in comparisons with other cordless tools like DeWalt, Bosch, Milwaukee, Hitachi, Makita. At the same price, I might choose Ridgid just because of the faster charging and LSA. But it's a heck of a lot cheaper than the other brands that are comparable right now.
Only tools that usually are comparable in price are Mastercraft, Ryobi, Kobalt, etc. Basically Ridgid is comparable in price to the other crappy house brands but in quality and performance to the good brands. It's not the cheapest, it's not the best, but when you buy Ridgid, especially when on sale, it's the best value you can get in my opinion.
This is a good sale for Ridgid tools but every manufacturer will have good sales on every so often. Personally I despise Ridgid for their misleading warranty coverage (the last time they pretended they didn't have my lifetime warranty registration even though I had previously used it!) and Home Depot in general. Good luck with your purchase though.