Cordless Drill 18v Kit

Panasonic EYC140 Kit Review

Earlier this year Panasonic released there lithium line of power tools including the new Panasonic 7440 Li-ion Drill Driver. The Panasonic 7440 has been selling like hot cakes since its release, so I thought I'd follow the crowd and buy one for home.

Panasonic are like the power tool industries best kept secret. Most of Joe Public think they just make big plasma TV's and Hi Fi's, but not professional level power tools! However as the more astute know Panasonic do indeed make power tools, yet unlike every other manufacturer, they only make cordless tools.

Panasonic don't broadcast the fact they manufacture tools, so that makes you wonder why they sell so many. It would appear to be because they are actually very very good.

When I was buying the Panasonic 7440 I noticed there Panasonic also did a combo kit of the 7440 and a 7540 Li-ion Impact Driver for not much more money than the Drill on its own called the EYC140. Having been a huge fan of impact drivers for years I decided to buy the kit.

Last weekend I used both the drill driver and the impact driver to replace the banister on the staircase in my new renovation project. Let's see how well they performed.

The old banister was held on to the post at the top of the stairs with 3 long wood screws. The house is from the Georgian era, and looking at the condition of they stairs, so are they. The impact driver whizzed 2 of the screws out no problem, however the third one was sheared by a combination of the power of the 7540 and the age of the screw.

Having elegantly removed the old banister, with a combination of the impact driver and a big hammer, I set about in my work installing the new one. Perhaps not the most heavy duty of jobs drilling pilot holes into pine, but the 7440 performed well, letting me complete all the work require of it in one charge. You have to love Lithium Ion.

After a brew, I finished the work installing the new banister and set about finishing off the job.

All in all the Panasonic kit performed really well on this job and I think it was a great purchase. think the only downside of the kit is the 7440 is a dill diver not a hammer drill, so masonry will be a problem for future jobs. That said I do own a Makita HR2470 SDS, so I would no doubt use that.

In summary I would recommend the EYC140B kit to anyone, needing a new cordless drill driver, as it basically comes with a free impact driver. If you already have a hammer drill or a combi, get this kit. However if your going to be drilling into masonry often you would perhaps be better looking else where, such as the Makita LXT202.

The Makita LXT202 is also a lithium kit, however is a more powerful 18v. It includes the BHP451 Combi Drill and a BTD140 Impact Driver. However the LXT202 is usually around £50 more expensive than the EYC140.

About the Author

Johan Nickson is a
panasonic power tool
enthusiast.

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This entry was posted on Friday, June 4th, 2010 at 12:37 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.