Tools

Pfs That drill from Aldi will be a generic Chinese drill rebadged for the importer. The thing about Chinese manufacturer's products is they vary so much in quality. I was previously a Compliance Officer for a importer of power tools and sometimes the certification showed how many different brands were importing the same product from the same Chinese manufacturer because it was cheaper for the Chinese factory to put all variations on the same certificate. Sometimes you would end up with 12 different models being listed, some major brands, some shop brands. I'd seen Bosch quite a lot on those certs. Even one product a small router was actually rebranded to Makita as well although I only remember seeing Makita once on such certs where as Bosch was a common occurrence. Sometimes the critical components would be different, these are the components that the product must have to be certified.

I noticed a lot of power tools sold into the US were lower spec, these had to be cordless tools as typically mains operated tools would have separate certification for the US due to their lower voltage. However cordless tools could be certified and the battery pack and charger would be certified separately unless wide voltage. In the US I think it used to be a 3 month warranty so some tools were built a bit cheaper as they didn't have to last as long in the US. A 2 year warranty was common in Europe. A common difference was aluminium windings for US destined power tools where as in Europe it would be copper windings in the motor.

Anyway the point is some of the Chinese designed and engineered tools were fantastic quality with very low returns and others were near junk really and had high return rates. Also it wasn't always obvious which was which, some of the cheaper looking tools could occasionally be the better tools and some cosmetically impressive tools had high failure rates.

I've had hands on experience of maybe thousands of power tools as I used to write power tool manuals.

However I'm still using a old Bosch mains drill at home which is 40 years old and made in Sweden. Probably needs new brushes in the motor as it sparks a little more than it used to, but still works well. My cordless drill is a oversized AEG drill but its nicad based and I'm thinking of doing a lithium ion conversion on the battery packs. It's the largest combi cordless drill I've ever seen and bought perhaps 10 years old. It may even take modern AEG lithium ion battery packs, not sure.