Kobalt rebranded their 18V power tools as 20V and “relaunched” them alongside new higher capacity battery packs. They also don’t hide that 20V Max = 18V nominally. Now, before you get mad at Dewalt and other SBD brands for doing this, keep in mind they weren’t the first, and they’re not the only ones. For example, there’s one magazine that ran an entire review roundup featuring the “top 20V cordless drills.” 20V Max drills are 18V drills with fancy branding. Making matters worse, some sources perpetuate misinformation and confusion. It’s not that this piece of information is hidden, but it’s not made obvious enough by retailers, distributors, or even some Dewalt product pages. I stopped adding “20V Max = 18V nominally” in 20V Max coverage because I assumed most people are aware of the distinction, but that unfortunately isn’t the case. They’re sold as 3.6V cells, not 4.0V cells. When you look at the battery cells these packs are made from, the combined voltage adds up to 18V. But once a load is applied and that battery pack is put to use, the output will be 18V. If you measure the output of a 20V Max battery pack when it’s pulled right off a charger, it’ll measure somewhere around 20V. What is important is that users understand that 20V Max battery packs operate at 18V nominally. It doesn’t really matter why Dewalt decided to go with 20V Max branding in the USA, Canada, and Mexico, and 18V XR everywhere else outside of North America. A cordless power tool with a higher voltage battery won’t necessarily out-perform a tool with a lower voltage battery. Faster processors won’t result in better performance compared to processors with multiple cores. More pixels can be worse for camera image quality if the pixels are smaller and less sensitive. More pixels, faster processors, higher voltage cordless power tools.īut that’s not the case now because there are so many other variables. This used to be true for a lot of things, especially emerging technologies, until it stops being true. Err, excuse me, 12V Max.īigger, more, larger is often considered better. No longer is it even true that an 18V tool is more powerful than a 12V tool. The same applies to power tools and voltage. It’s how we’re trained to think.Ī 2.4 GHz computer processor is faster than 2.0 GHz, right? And a 24 megapixel camera is better than 18 megapixel, right? No, not necessarily.
Which would you think is more powerful, an 18V power tool or 20V power tool? “Well duh, 20V,” is the default thinking of a lot of people, or at least many if not most Americans. Here in the USA, many of us always assume the bigger, the better. Users would try to connect the 20V Max batteries to the 18V tools and vice versa.Ģ0V Max does also have marketing benefits. When I pushed my questions about this, I was told that there is a far larger existing Dewalt userbase in the USA and that when they observed groups’ behavior when comparing tool lines, they saw much confusion. So now we have 20V Max and 20V Max XR, compared to 18V XR everywhere else.Ĥ-1/2 years ago, in a comment following my Dewalt 20V Max power tool line launch post, I responded to a reader and said: These tools and batteries didn’t exist until a few years after the 20V Max platform launched. Here in the USA, Dewalts more premium brushless tools and higher capacity battery packs have 20V Max XR branding. Everywhere outside North America, there is no “20V Max.” Dewalt’s current generation of Li-ion power tools are simply branded 18V XR. Things have gotten a little more convoluted since then. When Dewalt first launched their 20V Max lineup with 20V Max branding, their marketing exec said it was to “avoid confusion.” They said that the intent was to differentiate the new tools from previous 18V tools so that users would know they were not backwards compatible. If you are first learning that 20V Max and 18V are the same, don’t feel too bad, you’re probably still in the majority. I have yet to determine whether there are more people that know what 20V Max means, or more people that assume 20V Max is more powerful than 18V. 4-1/2 years later, lots of people still assume 20V Max is more powerful than 18V. Aldi workzone cordless circular saw.If you didn’t already know this, don’t worry, it’s not just you.