18V Brushless Impact Driver - Dewalt or Makita?

[mailee]

Sorry for the late reply Tom but I had to wait to get back into the shop to check. One of the batteries has a star on it and the other doesn't. What is the significance of that? :?

 

[MMUK]

Sorry for the late reply Tom but I had to wait to get back into the shop to check. One of the batteries has a star on it and the other doesn't. What is the significance of that? :?

The battery without a star is a copy and not genuine Makita :mrgreen: I have one myself and whilst it works just as well as the genuine ones, the run time is only about half.

 

[mailee]

Ah, now that is interesting. The one with the star is the only one left working now. Strangely though two of them came with the drill/driver, the one with the star and one without? Bought from Screwfix when they had an offer on. :?

 

[tomm41pvm]

Neither will be copies. The ones with the star are the newer "intelligent" batteries which communicate with the charger. These stop any potential problems with the charger killing the battery. All the batteries now have the star on.

I reckon makita must have had a batch of dodgy batteries a couple of years ago and therefore developed the star batteries. I think its the ones which are 2-3 years old that people seem to be having problems with.