Had to choose between a Snap-on and a Harbor Freight impact gun for daily use

I was standing in my shop last Tuesday looking at two impact wrenches. One was the Snap-on that cost me $450 and the other was a $60 one from Harbor Freight I picked up on a whim. I grabbed the cheap one first because I was scared of dropping the expensive one on a greasy floor. It actually held up fine for 3 months of brake jobs and tire rotations, but then the anvil started wobbling on a rusty Ford F-150 lug nut. I switched to the Snap-on and it broke that nut loose in one shot, no drama. Has anyone else found a surprising use for those budget tools where they actually outperform the high-end stuff?

2 comments

2 Comments

skylerg1728d ago

Hold on, I gotta push back on this one. I've had the exact opposite experience with those cheap impacts. That $60 Harbor Freight unit is a ticking time bomb, I've seen three of them lock up or just stop working entirely after a few months of light use on farm equipment. The Snap-on might cost more, but you're paying for the fact that it's going to work every single time for years, and the warranty actually covers stuff like the anvil wobble you mentioned. You're basically gambling your time and productivity by relying on that budget tool for daily use, one job it fails on costs you way more than the price difference. If you're a pro, that cheap tool is a waste of money because you'll end up buying the good one anyway after it breaks. How many times did you have to mess with the Harbor Freight one to get it to work before you finally grabbed the Snap-on?

uma30628d ago

And honestly, the time I wasted fighting that HF impact before it finally died is something I'll never get back. It was like the thing had a mind of its own, one day it'd rip a lug nut off fine, next day it'd just sit there and buzz. I bet I spent an extra 20 minutes on that one job just coddling it and trying different sockets before I finally gave up and borrowed a buddy's Snap-on that night. That one failure alone cost me more than the price difference in lost time and frustration.