Is Brushless Better Than Corded – Toolstop Debate
Posted by Toolstop Colin on 2nd Feb 2016
We bang on and on about how great brushless motors are on this blog.
They’re smaller. They’re lighter. They run cooler. They give you longer runtime from your batteries, whether you’re still packing 3Ah or if you’ve moved up to 5Ah or higher. They’re a big step up from brushed motors in the cordless power tool evolution.
Share this on your favourite social network!
But a big question that needs to be considered in figuring out whether brushless is better is this:
Are brushless motors more powerful than corded tools?
Why does this matter? The heavier the application you need your tool to undertake, the more powerful you need your motor to be. You want as much grunt coming from the motor to the business end of the tool as you can possibly manage. And that’s particularly important on tools such as recip saws. You’re probably going to want to cut through some metal, or you’re in the middle of some demolition work and you want your cordless recip saw to slice like a hot knife through butter that window frame, for example.
Does having a brushless motor and a cordless tool – with its smaller size and lighter weight – mean you’re sacrifcing power?
Yes, you’re not tethered to a constant power supply, you’re relying on an efficient transfer or the available charge in a battery to flow through the connectors, into the switch to turn the motor. But does brushless efficiency mean you’ll never match the power offered by corded?
We were interested to see a video from our pals at Coptool (find them on YouTube here) upload a quick demo video from a trade show in America. The tool in question was Makita’s “coming soon” 18v and 36v brushless reciprocating saws.
The claim by Makita was a simple one:
“Our new brushless tools won’t match the performance of a corded tool. It will exceed the performance.”
Admittedly, “better performance” isn’t just tied to the power offered by the motor. In the case of a recip saw it’s stroke length and strokes per minute, and the same applies to jigsaws. But it would seem that these new brushless models from Makita out-perform their corded cousins in every department.
Judge for yourself how scientific the demonstration is, and of course, a small debate has started on the Coptool channel, which you can see in the comments of the video above. But as our pals at Coptool have said:
“As technology improves we are seeing new brushless motors that are getting more and more powerful vs the older brushed motors we had 5 or 10 years ago. Since many corded tools (brushed motors) have not been updated in 5-10+ years we are seeing new “cordless” tools that can out perform old “corded” tools. That’s not a function of power coming from a cord or a battery but older motors vs newer motors.”
We want to know what you think about this: is it a debate – are brushless cordless tools going to replace corded tools in your kit? Do you trust the technology or do you feel your corded tools will always get the job done for you?