Thread: Makita vs Hitachi

Was In Bunnies where they are selling the AEG cordless I mentioned above. while I was there two were brought back in under warranty. I had a look and noticed several more in the returns area. Not a good sign!

Had a look in Tool City and Glenfords. Both recommend the Panasonics, Hitachi, and Makita. There is also a new range of Milwauke on the way very soon. The battery technology in them has made them more compact and reports are that they will be excellent products.

I have two brothers who deal with this sort of stuff in their trade/employment and both agree with Glenfords and Tool City. If you knew my brothers then this is a red letter event!!

A question: Why are there no 240V drill/drivers made with a clutch system as on the cordless drill/drivers.

hi just starting,
i have been working as a carpenter for 18 years, i consider makita tools good enough to qualify as trade tools.

i have spent thousands of dollars on every type of drop saw available, i had dropsaws stolen, fall off scaffolds and roofs. hence i have replaced quite a few over the years.

i always buy makita dropsaws now, hitachi have a new saw now with lasers and all the bells and whistles, but i have never tried it, maybe someone here can do a review on it. i keep my festool dropsaw in the workshop, there's no way i would bring it on site!

i am interested to hear why you state hitachi has the edge over makita?
dont worry, i dont work for makita, but i do believe they make quality products.

p.s. a good example would be to ask how many chippies here, have a makita planer in their tool box. i have four myself.

regards, justin.

Hi Ecsk,

I have had some expeience with cordless driver/drills plus often ask the tradies why they chose their cordless. Renovatin' an old house last year with various tradies calling in - unanimous for 18V Hitachi Li Ion trade quality - plenty power for ya dolla.
Importantly - choose the tool best suited for the main tasks. For decking you need torque and long time between charging. Metabo is pretty good too, but really is currently behind Hitachi in performance. Get the best Ah rating you can afford.
Anything less than 18V will probably damage the motor - or use a mains powered driver - much cheaper.

Now and then a ripper brand and model is made and is a modern classic - like the Hitachi TR12 2HP router.

happy shoppin.

I've just always liked Makita. We've got Makita tools in our workshop that have lasted 20 years, and I wouldn't know how to "replace bushes" or other technical things like that! The ROS that we bought did do a bearing within the first year, and was repaired under warranty, but other than that I've never been able to kill a Makita anything...

Originally Posted by justinmcf

i am interested to hear why you state hitachi has the edge over makita?
dont worry, i dont work for makita, but i do believe they make quality products.

p.s. a good example would be to ask how many chippies here, have a makita planer in their tool box. i have four myself.

regards, justin.

No real reason other than personal observation, just seem to have seen more green on the sites that I had been on, not that I'm on loads of sites. but as I said would be a close call both make good quality products.

I've just bought a new AEG 190 mm saw, and yes, I'm surprised at some of the fittings - plastic dust exit hole and some rather thin pressed tin. Certainly not as robust as my old Makita 235 mm saw. Sign of the times I guess. Perhaps though the motor is better than the cheapies. Ged

After a few weeks of reading/reviewing, eventually I bought this grey import package
http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI....m=160322016362
Yes, it is directly from USA (except the charger) and I only got 3 months warranty, the price is a good deal I reckon. I'll fire it up this weekend for some small task and see how it goes.

hi ecsk. thats a great deal you got there, back in march 2006, i paid $650 for 1 makita 18 volt lithium drill,1x110 vlt charger, 2xbatteries, and a bag, i did not get the driver with it, that was even more money, well done!

regards, justin

Originally Posted by justinmcf

hi ecsk. thats a great deal you got there, back in march 2006, i paid $650 for 1 makita 18 volt lithium drill,1x110 vlt charger, 2xbatteries, and a bag, i did not get the driver with it, that was even more money, well done!

regards, justin

iirc, li-ion cordless tool only started in Australia few years ago, back to 2006 certainly you needed to pay rocket high $$, I can see over many years power tools price actually go down, with all these cheap chinese import tools flooded into the market (ozito, rockwell, gmc, etc), named brand tool need to keep their price competitive.

I've heard repair guys state that the Hitachi's tend to break their handles if dropped due to the weight proportioning. Also said not to buy Bosch, I never asked why. Generally I think that Dewalt. Milwaukee, Makita, Hitachi are all good, and the Hitachi is probably the best value. I personally don't like Dewalt drills, prefer the Maks, but also like the feel of the Milwaukee.

Hi all,

Hitachi used to be utterly simple and rugged, packed in mediocre design. Their products weren't much to look at and for their construction they seemed vastly overpriced, since for such materials you just couldn't see where your money was spent on. But the simplicity and the determination to choose just the right kind of materials and metallurgy, was their secret recipe for reliability and service life. On that account there was similarity with the Landrover way of doing things. It isn't fast or comfortable, there's no luxury and stereo and airco but it gets you accross the desert, and back.

Hitachi lost market share on its dull design and their design department was allowed to go way over the top a few years ago as a reaction. Now it looks as though the same guys that designed alien gadgets for films like Predator, timeshare behind the Hitachi studio drawing boards . Seemingly impressed by this in some way, even Makita copies some of those design features and it shows off the same weird zigzag rubber grip details and colour contrasts. Inside, the technology of Hitachi and Makita have many similarities, the perfomances and features and lifespans are comparable to a high degree between brands within type classes, just like with highly competitive family car brands. In the novelties-department Hitachi is known to lag behind a bit, but this conservatism is meant to closely watch how competitors fare with new introductions. When the market fails to pick up or faulty new technology is called back, Hitachi often incorporates the necessary improvements in their own first introduction or skips the novelty altogether until is it matured or lucrative enough.
Hitachi is also a bit more hampered by the hugeness of its setup. It is a large overall brand like Mitsubishi, whereas Makita is a real tool specialist. Makita doesn't make hard disc drives and cranes and excavators and electric locomotives and LCD-screens and silicon chips like Hitachi does, its sole existance revolves around the making of power tools.

Nevertheless, both brands offer the same quality and technology. Both have Lithium-Ion batteries, experiment with brushless motors, have the same ways in which the tools are put together on the assembly line, use comparable smart charger technology and may well have the same sources for the purchase of components. Hitachi has factories near Tokyo, Malaysia and Ireland. The latter two mainly cater for the European and American market. Makita has factories in Japan, the USA (Georgia), Germany and England. Its European base is stronger and there is also a dedicated link in the States. New Makita products therefore seem to be tailored to local market expectations sooner than the new Hitachi products are. Black & Decker introduced the first battery drill, but Makita was the first to offer a comprehensive range of battery tools. As a budget, Makita introduced the Maktec-line, which is made in China. The quality of that is rather less, you are advised to invest a bit more money to go for the real thing.

The origins of AEG battery tools are somewhat vague. The Allgemeine Elektrizitäts Gesellschaft once started as an Edison daughter in Berlin (Deutsche Edison Gesellschaft), but like Hitachi with its Koki daughter firm, it set up a dedicated power tool division in Winnenden. Like Hitachi, the AEG conglomerate is huge, just like its rival Siemens is. Its accumulated technical knowledge is also vast, AEG makes everything from power stations to entire grids and transformer stations, to electric locomotives, electronics, industrial drive systems and household goods. Like many battery tool brands, they started off with Mabuchi and Johnson motors, and either made batteries and gears and switches themselves or bought them off the rack.
During the mid 80's, there was just too much competition on the tool market and many brands sought some form of cooperation to share development, production and distribution chain costs. AEG joined with Outillage Peugeot and the stationary machine manufacturer Lurem, both from France, to form the European Power Tool Company (EPTC). Which was odd, because there was also cooperation with Ryobi around that time (some AEG belt sanders in the latter 80's were license built Ryobi designs).
Before all that, AEG already ordered several woodworking tool models from other firms (circulars saws and sanders and planers from Mafell and a copy of the MOF96 router model from Perles from Switzerland, which was originally developed for Elu).

In the latter 90's, the Swedish firm Atlas-Copco decided to add an electric power tool line to its pneumatic one. Atlas was renowned for its compressors and full pneumatic rock drilling equipment. It has a huge reputation to lose in mining and tunnel digging, but it kept a jealous eye on Hilti, who was making progress in electric rock drilling alternatives, which before were no match whatsoever when it came to service life and reliability in such harsh conditions. Atlas bought AEG's power tool division to profit from its vast overall electric motor konwledge and specific Winnenden tool knowledge. That's when many AEG designs popped up in the market in a black Atlas livery. Atlas indeed got the intended knowledge to make high-frequency induction motor driven rock drills and even initiated a brief revival of that motor technology in a range of angle grinders, fed by a very modern transistorised static frequency converter (instead of the regular rotary converter set). It was also during the Atlas-period when Milwaukee was pulled inside the group. In the States, Milwaukee is considered to be almost in the same ranks as Porter-Cable, when it comes to tool reputation and durability. Atlas also bought Kango from England and got involved in a huge row with Black & Decker in the process, when it decided to choose the yellow and black from its famous Atlas-Copco compressors for its newly acquired range of former Kango drills, just when B&D chose yellow and black for its DeWalt brand to be reintroduced. B&D pushed all its might and money and lobbying power through the courts and got its way, making Atlas choose another colour or its electric power tools (the earlier mentioned all black).

Atlas found the entire merger-enterprise to be not as profitable as expected and returned to its core business five years ago, selling the AEG/Milwaukee/Kango-construction to the Hong Kong investment firm TI. As far as i know, AEG bought itself free a while ago and is again on its own at the moment in Winnenden, but still works closely together with Milwaukee. They share many machine models, therefore many comparable products are available in both Milwaukee red or AEG blue. So it's no surprise that many Milwaukee battery tools now bear an AEG house-style as well. The Milwaukee technology had similarity with that of Makita in many models. AEG battery tools prior to the Atlas adventure were own developments from Winnenden. They were not the most advanced products in the battery tool market, but made from very good components. I'm not sure who made the batteries, they may be from Varta or Sonnenschein, but they may also be from Matsushita (Panasonic). I've seen a few AEG battery drills from the inside, but i never found the batteries to be branded or stamped or such. In the rpm-electronics and battery charger circuits, it is a pretty good bet that AEG electronics daughter firm Telefunken was involved in the design in some way. So at least the vintage AEG drills are of fine quality. Later products may be of OEM origin, i must admit i know very little about that.

I read the name Panasonic in the posts above several times, and i absolutely agree with the forum members mentioning it. These tools are fabulous. They run smooth, have excellent power to weight ratio and have very good batteries, holding their charge for a very long time. Most of us know Matsushita/Panasonic technology to be good and reliable, which is again made true in these tools.

So Panasonic is definitely a tip. And the top range of Makita, Hitachi and AEG may turn out to be comparable up to a high degree. For the money, Panasonic seems to be the best value at the moment. Avoid the budget lines, chances are big that unknown manufacturers or component merchants may be involved, in spite of the brand flags using their A-reputation to suggest otherwise.

greetings from Holland and happy cordless Easter!

gerhard

you are the man gerhard, keep up the good work mate and happy easter!

cheers, justin.

Fabulous stuphph Gerhard!

Where did you dig up all that Info. and how did you get the time to put it together?

I have a Hitachi M12V2 router and an continualy impressed with how quite and smooth it is. I heard a guy using a Makita 3612 and was unimpressed with the screaming noise.

Thats the extent of my Hitachi v Makita experiance.

Ben.