I used to be a DeWalt fan many moons ago when they made stuff properly. Nowadays all the DeWalt stuff is actually made by B&D, in the B&D factory and with B&D parts. I only found this out when I worked for Stanley Black & Decker on contract a few years ago. Over those years I had nothing but problems with chucks, gearboxes, battery failures, the list goes on.
More recently (around 12 months ago) I was offered to trial the then new 4.0Ah battery in a DCD980. Needless to say, they haven't ironed out the quality issues. The 4.0Ah battery lasted only half the time of the older 3.0Ah battery, the gearbox completely failed and the 4.0Ah battery actually ended up catching fire.
Anyway, I started using Makita about 12 years ago. In that time I've had Ni-Cd & Ni-Mh until I upgraded to Li-Ion about 5 years ago. In the last five years I've had only two faults. The first was the Jacobs chuck on a BHP452 Anniversary Black & White drill collapsed and the second was a charger short circuited (although I suspect it got damp). I have never had a battery fail (and I have fourteen of them). I've had them get warm on occasion but they've never let go. I'm still regularly using the original batteries that came with the first Li-Ion stuff I bought. They must have ten thousand plus of hours use on them by now and they're still going strong!
I do have a few 240v items of other brands (Evolution & Tonino Lamborghini), bought at the time on a tight budget after selling all my 110v gear, but my power tool collection is primarily Makita. Oh, and a couple of cheap 12v Li-Ion drills I use for concept LED work (light as a feather) but I bought those before Makita released the 10.8v range.
As far as the quality goes, I've found them better than anything else with the possible exception of the old industrial AEG stuff (remember the black bodied stuff before they were bought out by Techtronik in Hong Kong?), the new Orange rubbish is made by Ryobi!
Makita are definitely, IMO, far superior to Milwaukee (cheap tacky plasticy rubbish these days), Metabo (over-priced and the gearboxes have the consistency of cheese) and DeWalt as mentioned above. I won't even start on Hitachi, I have a demolition hammer of theirs which has had three new exciters under warranty and two new stator windings. Now it's just out of warranty and needs another exciter :evil:
