Tag Archive for 'Cordless'

Bosch IXO III Screwdriver

Published on 19 January, 2009. View Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

Bosch IXO III Screwdriver (by William Hook)

On all the previous stuff I’ve ever had from IKEA, there’s always been one thing I hate – assembly. So, when I picked up the chest of drawers from IKEA last week, I went into B&Q (UK version of Home Depot / Bunnings, for the American and Australian readers) and picked up a very neat little device – the Bosch IXO III Screwdriver.

Simply put, it’s like a mini version of a drill. It’s very light, simple to use, and is very useful for if you have a lot of screws to do, but don’t want a full sized drill or anything expensive / large. I wouldn’t recommend this to a builder, because it’s not designed for that type of use, however I would recommend it to someone who does a fair amount of work around the home / office, but not enough to warrant a proper drill. While my dad does already have a drill, it’s a hammer drill designed for drilling through stuff like bricks, and I wouldn’t even try it with a screw. Plus, it’s not cordless, so you have to plug it in whenever you want to use it.

Pros:

  • Small and light (and kinda cute, too :D ).
  • Moderately cheap.
  • Extremely easy to use.
  • Ideal for the occasional job at home or an office, where a proper drill would be overkill.
  • Small base station for storing the screw heads, and charging it using a nearby plug.
  • Comes with all the screw heads you’ll likely need, including two torx screw heads (if you’ve ever opened an Xbox, you’ll know what these are).

Cons:

  • Lithium Ion battery takes a while (5 hours) to charge.
  • …and you can’t remove it.
  • Screwdriving only – even if you did manage to bastardize it into a drill, the RPM isn’t high enough to be useful for anything other then paper.
  • It’s moderately cheap – but so are full-sized drills, so for another £25 you could get a pretty good budget cordless drill.
  • Not ideal for someone who works as a builder or handyman – the battery isn’t all that big, and I somehow doubt it would work for a full day of use – whereas with a cordless drill, you can swap the battery within seconds, and most builders and handymen I’ve seen have at least two fully charged batteries for a days work.

Overall? I’d give it about 8.5/10. Very useful for around the home or office, but it does take a while to charge.