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Cake day: June 3rd, 2023

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  • I’m in Spain. I usually shop at Lidl, Aldi, or Mercadona, a large chain of medium size stores, generally well regarded, with a very good selection, and high quality house brands. Mercadona puts customer satisfaction first, and employee satisfaction second. This seems to be true as employee satisfaction is high, rotation low, and satisfaction levels of around 70%, which in this type of sector is very high. They also pay up to 150% of the median income for these types of jobs.







  • Bullshit! I don’t agree. Many pros use Hilti, the best brand, full stop, but crazy expensive, followed by Fein and Festool (the basic Festool circular saw is like 600€) Pros who want to pay less use any of the other “color teams”, yellow, blue, red, dark blue… And yes DeWalt is 100% pro, and some pros use Bosch blue. My buddies shop uses Bosch blue for corded, but has gone Milwaukee for battery, as cordless Bosch has been hit-and-miss. I had a 80% DeWalt shop and can vouch for them. I particularly love their sliding miter saws and small, thin waist angle grinders (the unsung multitasking wonder tool). BTW. Angle grinders MUST be corded, except for a very small set of use cases. Battery angle grinders suck pig’s balls.

    Also Makita>Bosch blue.

    Sadly Ryoby has gone full cheap DIY, like SKIL (owned by Bosch now?) I have an old maybe 18ish Ryobi (Blue) circular saw. Built like a tank, with a cast aluminum foot, that is as precise as day one. Oh well…


  • I agree, but in the mean time you can buy adapters that allow us to use mix-and-match batteries with other brands. Just search aliexpress for strings like "Makita or (insert brand here) battery adapter.

    I’m ordering a LIDL parkside battery to DeWalt XRP adapter. There are compatible batteries for around 20€, but I have a few LIDL Parkside tools now, and only a couple of Dewalts.


  • In Europe, LIDL’s Parkside lineup is fantastic. The battery lineup is a system, with two battery types, a 12V and a 20V. Their battery and charger lineup is great, cheap and reliable. A 2Ah is 20€, and an 8Ah for 50€. The 8Ah has bluetooth (I thought it was a gimmick, but is surprisingly useful!). Oh, BTW, the 8Ah is about the size of a regular 4Ah!

    The range is astounding, having tools that no major brand has. I have a convertible saw that can be a sawzall or a jigsaw, that has no right to work so well as it does in both modes, an air pump set, with a high pressure for tires and stuff, and a high volume pump that inflates OR deflates my 3.5m dinghy in under 3min, or a tiny rotary drill, smaller than a full size battery hammer drill that is a little beast.

    I used to own a sign shop so I kind of know a bit about these tools. Sign shops work with almost all materials, from metal to wood to plastics, to concrete and masonry, so the range of power tools we had was bewildering. My shop was team yellow with the odd Hitachi, now Hikoki. When I closed the shop I kept some of them. DeWalt is very, very good, but for DIY purposes, LIDL’s Parkside is my go to now.

    I would place much, but not all, the lineup at prosumer level, with features like all-metal one-hand-locking chucks, metal gearcases, brushless versions, and more.

    EDIT: I just watched a video where they show how a rotary drill works. They cut open that little drill I mentioned above to show how they work. All inners, including gearing is metal. Maybe not the best alloy, but very decent in my experience.