Ryobi RCD12011L cordless drill/driver
I was recently preparing for a week long trip to Verbier, Switzerland to fit out a chalet with curtains and other soft furnishings we had made. And for this, I needed to put together a travel tool kit.
With a 25kg weight limit on hold baggage I needed something light weight, and that’s when I decided I had to have the Ryobi RCD12011L 12v cordless drill driver as my travel companion.
I’ve seen this drill driver before – it first caught my eye when I was wandering around B&Q researching the perfect tools for a starter tool kit for my blog. I reckoned at the time that this lovely little piece of kit would be the perfect starter drill driver for someone putting together their first tool kit. Why? because for the first time DIY’er putting up the odd shelf, you don’t really need an 18v power house. You want something relatively small, light weight, but decent quality.
So what do I love about the Ryobi RCD12011L?
Price: well, at £57 you’re getting a lot of power tool for your money. At just over 1kg it feels weighty enough for you to know there’s a lot of good quality engineering in the tool whilst obviously being incredibly light weight when compared to the 18v combi drill driver alternatives. In short, when you grab hold of this little tool, you know you’re holding a quality tool.
Specs: Ryobi have pretty much packed into this tiny bundle everything they offer in their larger 18v drill drivers.
You’ve got 22 torque settings (the settings that you adjust when you’re powering home screws, and you want the power to be just right).
the keyless chuck has a capacity of 10mm – so in layman’s terms it will fit a maximum drill diameter of 10mm
An LED illuminates the area that you’re drilling or screwing into. I always thought LEDs were a bit of a gimmick, but out in Verbier I really benefited from it, and even used it as a temporary torch when I was screwing up into a dark space behind a curtain!
A fuel guage on the side tells you how much battery you’ve got left. Again, I found this incredibly useful. For a little 12v battery (the black bit you can just see at the base of the handle), I have to say I was a bit sceptical about how much usage I would get between charges. Admittedly most of the time I was only screwing into wood, but I was really impressed – charging it up only a couple of times whilst I was out there. The fuel guage is great, because with Lithium ion batteries you don’t get any warning when they’re running out of juice – they literally just stop, so the fuel guage gives you invaluable warning.
the 12v 1.3Ah Lithium-ion battery comes with a charger – as you would expect (or hope!)
Electronic variable speed – with both forward and reverse gears gives you all the versatility you need – particularly when using the RCD12011L as a screwdriver.
Canvas case – incidental but still very important, it comes in a great little canvas case, which as you can see from the picture below, formed the perfect carry case for my miniature travel tool kit.
So if you’re thinking of buying the Ryobi RCD12011L – perhaps as I did, for a lightweight tool to take on your travels, or maybe for your household tool kit, you’ll need some drill/ screwdriver bit accessories, and again strolling around B&Q my day just got that little bit better when I caught sight of Ryobi’s 40 piece drill/screwdriver bit accessory set – pictured below.
The 40 piece accessory set comes in a roll out fabric case.
I couldn’t take my enormous, unwieldy Makita 252 piece accessory set with me on the plane and so the 40 piece set pictured above was perfect in that it had every conceivable accessory bit I would need for my Verbier project, all beautifully packaged in a fabric tool belt that rolls up into a tiny little package that fit neatly into the drill driver case.
So that was it. All I needed to do was add a couple of other tools to my kit – spirit level, multi tool and wire cutters – see photo above (plus some screws and wall plugs – not pictured), and I had everything I needed for my trip – in a tiny case that weighed in at a mind bogglingly light 2-3kg!