Once upon a time, m y recommendations would have been:, Porter Cable is teh BEST you can get, then Milwaukee, Makita, but after those, quality goes fairly fast. However, most of them have been bought and sold, so they no longer are the same companies they were, and quality has "shifted". From one of the tool forums:
"Home Depot wanted to start a house-brand power tool line several years ago. Around that time, Sears had ended their relationship with Emerson electric, who had coincidentially bought Ridge Plumbing. Ridgid employees were not happy. My take on the current Ridgid tools is that you're sort of up the river when it comes to future support. God knows where this stuff will be made soon.
So HD signed up Emerson. At first they sold stationary woodworking tools and wet vacs. These wre wholly produced by Emerson. Same tools as used to be made for Sears. A couple years back they expanded into portable tools and changed many of the stationary tools.
The way they did that was to license the Ridgid name from Emerson for exclusive HD use for power tools. 85% of the portable tools are made by Ryobi's Taiwanese parent company (OWT). Ryobi also makes lots of Sears tools so that's why there's another resemblance. Some Ridgids also might be Metabo designs.
Black & Decker (parent of DeWalt) bought Pentair's tool branch last year. This includes Delta, Porter-Cable, and some other smaller brands.
The really made deal was Milwaukee. At the same time B&D was buying Delta, Milwaukee sold out to OWT--the same Asian company who makes Ryobi and Sears stuff. Now, lots of Milwaukee tools were made in Taiwan and China before this happened, but I doubt its improved the situation. "
Check out Amazon.com, they have a LOT of promos on tools.
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