Today we were working on our layout. the Baseboards are all screwed and glued which was fine when we had access to a rather swanky Bosch drill-driver! but alas today, the drill driver was in Hereford and we were in London!
So off we went to our local toolshop. I am rather fortunate that my local power tool shop is London Power tools! We had a good look round and most of the stuff on offer was completely out of our price range. Festool and Makita make beautifull tools but I simply cant justify £200 (not including the battery!!!!) on yet another drill. They did have cheaper options but alas none were in stock (its great to have an excuse handed to me on a plate like that!).
Out we walked with a Bosch Professional GSR 10,8-2-Li.
At this point I would like to point out to Bosch that their naming conventions are rubbish! Bosch professional GSR 10,8-2-Li.... Seriously, what kind of name is that???
From what I can gather, its a 10.8V drill with a Lithium ion battery pack. what the 2 is for I have no idea. Mk2?
Its a fantastic tool. Like most men I have had my fair share of experience with power tools and drills in particular. Its not too heavy but very solidly built. the Built-in light actually illuminates the bit where you are drilling and not just flooding the wall with a load of light. That was a really nice touch.
There is plenty of torque for driving in screws (if you really want to know, Bosch claim 13/30Nm). you wouldn't want to use it for drilling into masonary but that's what my hammer drill is for. This was purchased primarily as a powered screwdriver that also drills holes when needed.
The supplied battery pack is 1.5 Ah but I believe this drill can take the 2Ah pack and even the 4Ah pack. but obviously you are going to have a big battery sticking out the bottom of your drill and this will completely spoil the neat form factor of this drill.
The drill comes with a charger that claims it can charge this battery in 35 minutes. I am not going to test it but for the amount of use this drill will get, even on a busy day I cant imagine running out of power. I may get a spare battery for it if I see one at the right price. (Amazon currently has them for approx. £30)
I don't really go in for L-BOXX. But should you be so inclined, its apparently L-BOXX ready and the correct box is 102.
It has a 2 speed gearbox covering 0-1300rpm and the variable speed trigger gives plenty of control. especially at the lower revs where I really like it.
The 10mm autolock chuck is a nice touch. let me explain.... every other keyless chuck I have used requires 2 hands. one to grip a ring and the other to tighten the chuck. If you tried to do it with one hand, all that happened was a slightly frustrating few seconds as you backdrove the drill. Bosch have got around that problem by having a drill that wont backdrive. I really hope there is some sort of mechanism in there and its not just tightening against the gears as I think that would be bad practice....
I would thoroughly recommend this drill/driver if you are in the market for something a bit nicer than a cheap and cheerful but don't want to shell out serious money or simply have no need for something bigger
This drill fills in a gap in my tolling. Its perfect when the Dremel is just too small (incidentally, the Dremel is also made by Bosch) but my Tesco corded hammer drill is just too big or fast.
Peter
