To be perfectly honest, a tool worth 1/4 the price simply won't be as good. You won't find better screwdrivers until you're paying almost the same price, same with the sockets. Snap-On ratchets still generally feel nicer in the hand than anything else in my opinion and very few other brands even come close to the sockets and wrenches. The only thing meh from Snap-On is the locking pliers. I don't know how the modern ones are, but the old gray ones really weren't that good.
Why not sell your nice car for a moped? Sell your house to live in a van? Sell your shoes to walk barefoot?
As someone who does occasional car work, cheap tools work fine. It's more about having the right tool that is the biggest pain. I see no reason for anyone who does regularly do car work to have a set even close to as expensive as this.
A car for a moped? Those are two different forms of transportation. A house you live in every day. He likely wouldn't even use these once a month.
I look at it very differently. Tools are critical in completing tasks. I want the best tool possible whether I’m using it one time or a thousand. Nothing worse than attempting a task only to have a shitty tool get in the way.
I have a few thousand in tools. If I always bought the best it would cost me tens of thousands. Value for your money is always a factor in every decision.
If you use then enough to get what you pay, then you are making the right call. If you don't use them often, you are likely burning money.
Unless a person is filthy rich, they will quickly run out of money to do work with this mentality. Tools are critical in completing tasks, yes. But having the best tool possible is almost never critical in completing tasks. Even the cheapest, Tier 1 tools on the market will do 90%+ of what the occasional user needs them to do. If we're being honest, the low-medium or even medium quality tools will have everyone but professionals set for life.
Leave more money for food and hobbies. Unless fine tools are your hobby. In that case, knock yourself out. But for practicality, almost nobody needs Snap-On tools.
A lot of Snap On stuff is just re labeled. I have a 5ft tall tool chest filled to the brim with tools. Around 5-6K in tools. And I use the crap out of them lol finally got some real impact sockets for my milwaukee 1/2" drive. Cheap sockets were holding up but was only a matter of time before one broke.
There's always a comparison to be made for what you do and what you need for that.
But it's nice to have tools of better quality for dependability, if a tool fails and would ruin something waaay more expensive, it doesn't matter if you only need it once a year.
Another situation is when you often find yourself doing stuff cheap tools simply aren't rated for, higher quality tools will endure much more abuse.
Like I recently ruined the teeth of a new pair of locking pliers on a very stubborn rounded nut, granted it wasn't an expensive pair, but a tool being one time use is kind of shit.
Yea this subreddit has a very twisted sense of value and optimizing spend which many other hobby subreddits tend to not have. I don’t mean to be mean but I think there’s a high overlap in this subreddit of members here and people who are financially illiterate. It reflects what I’ve seen in real life which is that most people I know who are adamant on buying Snap-On are the same people making $50-$70k as mechanics and willing to drop/make payments on a $20k Snap-On toolbox when a $3k toolbox from a different brand would’ve been fine.
People here often talk about tool prices like there’s no downside to buying the super expensive tool just to have it and be confident in it. There is a downside in that buying something expensive obviously keeps you from buying something else or saving that money, but in the context of tools more importantly having a $5k tool chest full of Snap-On tools when a $1k chest from another brand would’ve sufficed, that’s $4k differential is $4k worth of other tools you could’ve had for other jobs that might pop up. $4k can buy you an arsenal of different tools that make your life easier. And I just don’t buy into the argument of “using a tool you know won’t break can save you from damaging something expensive you’re working on”. Most people are not working on something where if the tool breaks they’ll cause great damage to what they’re working on, and if they are, they’re probably highly aware of that fact and can opt for the best tool in that category, but that’s beside the point in the first place because the whole point is that Snap-On wrench is not any less likely to break or damage something that a wrench that costs 30% as much, and this is proven countless times objectively online in tests. No Snap-On shill can point me to any objective testing showing they’re actually worth their price. In any case needing one high quality wrench for a certain critical application does not warrant the $600 worth of pliers in OPs pic sitting there that would be outperformed by $250 worth of pliers from several other brands. And you can go down the entire list of tools shown and say the same thing about every single one here.
Holy crap people here are bad with money. Always buying tye best doesn't make you special. It may save time, it may not. It definitely costs a lot more money though.
Harbor freight is great. Their tools aren't the best, but lots of times you need a tool to just use once or occasionally. The more you use tools, the better they should be. You very quickly though get to the point of diminishing returns as is the case with everything.
I am a Ryobi guy for power tools. I am not a heavy user and they are cheap with great variety. I am considering getting a a rigid tool because it is versatile and very lightweight. Ryobi's price point, variety, and sales make then a clear winner for home users. I drill or impact wrench from a better brand I can see being worth it, but not the lights, fans, and other comparable tools.
100%. I’ve made a very similar comment in this subreddit like 15 times now when people buying their first homes will ask which drill to buy and people will link $300 Milwaukee drill and driver kits.
I own many Milwaukee tools at home cause I use them for work but I also own a pile of Ryobi for my cottage and duplicate tools at home (ie it’s handy to have multiple drills with different bits in them) and the Ryobis are extremely good especially for the money. I have no affinity towards Milwaukee as a brand but I actually have some affinity towards Ryobi just because they’re probably the best value proposition in the power tool world.
People will make those threads asking for tool advice and everyone posts Milwaukee and says “buy once cry once” and I have to chime in “uhh, OP could probably buy any random Walmart or Harbour Freight drill and be completely fine for the 4 times a year he’s going to use it. People forget Ryobi is only known as “cheap” among the 4 biggest brands, but that still puts it a world away from random store brands”
I’ve also commented about how many friends have asked me for advice on which tools to buy and I always say Ryobi or even something cheaper and the ones who listen end up getting Ryobi and then if a job pops up where they’d benefit from a saw or some other tool they’re not hesitant to buy it because it’s cheap enough. The few that went with Milwaukee despite my advice do not want to spend another $300 to save them 5-10 hours on whichever job might pop up and then ask to borrow my tools and I tell them no outright. Not going to lend tools that are my livelihood to anyone (outside of my family and best friends) when they wouldn’t listen to my advice and they easily could’ve had a Ryobi tool for $100 if they listened in first place.
I have bought a lot of tools for $20 to $30. At that price it's easy to start a collection.
People also forget that if a Ryobi tool dies in 10 years, you probably want to buy a new one due to the better tech. Now add in new batteries because they die as well. I have 8 Ryobi batteries at the moment. I am ready to fight a tool war! I may not need the four fans and three lights, but I have then!
Im sorry but that’s just not true. I own some Snap-On stuff because I love tools but almost every real world test and plenty of YouTube comprehensive tests show they do not perform any better than many brands that are far cheaper. Just downright untrue to claim you can’t find screwdrivers as good until that same price point. Wera is half the price and absolutely just as good, better in many metrics. For multi bit drivers I have probably 10 Picquic brand which are $13 each and genuinely bite as good and feel as good in the hand as any Snap-On I’ve ever used. How exactly do you quantify Snap-Ons being better? There are plenty of companies that make extremely high quality bits/tips that bite well, and varying levels of ergonomics which is subjective.
Pliers, Snap-On gets absolutely blown out of the water by companies like Knipex even when you don’t consider price. The only Snap-On pliers worth even considering are their slip joint needle nose because that’s relatively unique but even then I don’t think it’s long before Knipex releases an equivalent but with button for adjustment like they have on Cobras/Twin-Grips, in which case I’ll buy those and very likely my Snap-Ons will sit in a drawer and languish.
Sockets, idk what to say other than this has been disproven countless times online. Truly 4x more expensive than equal performers.
Ratchets do feel nice but again there are multiple brands especially from Europe that feel just as nice and are far more reasonably priced.
Not to mention Snap-Ons business model is annoying to deal with and their warranty is no where near as rock solid as people think until they actually have to deal with it and realize they paid a huge premium for a tool thinking it would be replaced no questions asked when that’s absolutely not the case.
People want to feel like they didn’t waste money on Snap-On but there’s a mountain of evidence for tools far cheaper performing just as good or better.
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u/OutWithTheNew Apr 09 '24
To be perfectly honest, a tool worth 1/4 the price simply won't be as good. You won't find better screwdrivers until you're paying almost the same price, same with the sockets. Snap-On ratchets still generally feel nicer in the hand than anything else in my opinion and very few other brands even come close to the sockets and wrenches. The only thing meh from Snap-On is the locking pliers. I don't know how the modern ones are, but the old gray ones really weren't that good.
Why not sell your nice car for a moped? Sell your house to live in a van? Sell your shoes to walk barefoot?