Which battery platform should you buy?
The drill is the cheap part. The batteries are the real purchase — you'll own them for a decade and they'll dictate every future tool you buy. Answer five questions for an honest recommendation.
Why the platform matters more than the drill
A cordless drill is a handle for a battery. Once you own two batteries and a charger for one system — DeWalt 20V MAX, Milwaukee M18, Makita 18V LXT, Ryobi ONE+, Bosch 18V, or Craftsman V20 — every additional bare tool on that system costs half to two-thirds of the equivalent kit somewhere else, and every tool on a different system means buying the batteries and charger all over again. That lock-in is why this choice outlasts the drill itself: platforms routinely stay with a household for ten years and a dozen tools. The five questions below weigh the things that actually separate the systems — how you will use the tools, how much you want to spend, whether you already own batteries, and how deep a tool catalog you need — and skip the things that don't, like marginal torque differences between flagship drills.
How to read your result
Your recommendation is the platform whose ecosystem fits your answers, not a verdict on the "best" brand — at the flagship level, DeWalt, Milwaukee, and Makita are all excellent, and Ryobi's ONE+ catalog is the deepest value line in the industry. Two tie-breakers the quiz cannot see: first, what your local stores actually stock, because a platform you can buy a bare tool for today beats a marginally better one that ships in a week; second, what people you borrow from and lend to own, since shared batteries are free batteries. If the result surprises you, the buying-order guide shows which tools to purchase first on any platform, and the drill comparison puts the current flagship specs side by side. Whatever you pick, buy the drill and impact driver as a combo kit with two batteries — it is the cheapest entry into every one of these systems.