Ryobi 18V

WOW I've never heard of festool and hilti but simple googling has turned up amazing stores of their customer service. Unfortunately it looks like they don't overlap completely in the types of tools Ryobi offers. I really like Ryobi's 18V and 40V 'ecosystem'. Every time I am browsing Home Depot or their website, I come across new items that are compatible with these two ecosystems. Just recently I saw everything from 18V Ryobi Glue Gun to a Portable Power washer that can suck water from a bucket (eliminating the need for a hose) to even a portable soldering iron! Hell they even got a boombox ha ha! For the 40V I saw cool things such as a portable power generator, lawn mowers, wet dry vac and even a portable refrigerator. Its really cool that there are like a bazillion things that your existing batteries can plug into.

Yeah, I'm on the Ryobi system for exactly that reason, and still using some of my original blue tools from the 90s. They just refuse to quit, and with modern batteries they perform better than ever. It's also the broadest system, with everything from drills and saws, to lights and fans, to soldering irons and dremel-like tools. Some of their stuff isn't as compact or as full-featured as Milwaukee, and this is shitty artificial segmentation on the part of their shared parent company, but for the most part it's all I've needed. (The new HP drill with the metal chuck and anti-backdriving clutch finally answers my chief complaint about all Ryobi drills before that.) But, NOBODY, on any battery platform, or even all of them put together, makes EVERYTHING I want, and I end up doing a fair amount of hacking. Ryobi 18v is a forgiving system, with the BMS integrated into the batteries, so you can just draw power and do whatever. I made my own soldering iron long before Ryobi released their own. I've had USB outputs since long before Ryobi released their own. I've cobbled together a 100W USB-C one now, while the official ones top out at 45W. I've been using those batteries to drive an electric cooler/freezer since long before Ryobi released their own. If I hypothetically had universal batteries that would fit any tool from any brand, would that make it better? Not significantly, I don't think. Other brands don't seem to offer significantly more, or significantly earlier. If I want a lo…

For what it's worth my experience has been the opposite. I bought one of their multiple tool bags back in the mid-00s and I'm still using all the original tools as well as a few more I've purchased since. The original NiMH batteries are all toast, but the tools run better on the new lithium batteries than they ever did on the NiMHs. I have about 8 years on my first set of lithium batteries and those are still going strong too. When I bought my house I was planning to get in to Ryobi's yard tool ecosystem since my experience with their 18v tools had been so good, but the garage door opener experience was enough to give me a push to eGo.

> What surprises me is that even within a single brand there are multiple standards. It's kind of annoying, but less so if there's at least some logic to it. I can get pretty much everything I need as a shit-tier home handyman from Ryobi's 18V range, but if I were a more committed gardener or DIY I could imagine I'd want their 36V range as well. And then be irritated that the higher-power range only covers some tools. All that said it does seem like, I dunno, a relatively pointless complaint. Are there people who are that keen to mix and match their Bosch and Ryobi? It's all much of a muchness.

The batteries are a selling point for Ryobi too, they’ve maintained compatibility with one 18v design since like 1990 so you don’t wonder “are they going to replace this battery design with an incompatible one next year?” I think the companies that wouldn’t like the proprietary are ones trying to make a new entry into the market, since you have to convince someone your tool is worth adding a new battery/charger to the garage while knowing there’s not a full system of everything that could use it. If there were a standard battery it’d be easier to say “we’re a company that only makes a circular saw.”