18V or 20V for lithium powered tools?
I'm still debating over whether to pitch all my
old crap into the dumpster and buy a new set
of lithium battery powered tools.

I'm confused about the battery configuration.
The Kobalt tools are 24V. I bought one of the $10 packs
to repurpose the high-current 18650 cells.
I verified that there
are six cells x 4V = 24V. OK.

There are 18V tools.
There are 20Vmax tools.

4V increments include 16V and 20V.
Where does the 18V come from?
Some of the 20Vmax tools have fine print
about being 20V after charge, but 18V in use???
Many of the batteries make no mention of the
capacity. I had to go home and google to figger it
out.

Are 20Vmax tools any better than the 18 volt ones?
Or did some marketing type get his way
and exaggerate at the advertising meeting???

Does it make sense to pay more for 20Vmax tools
than the 18V counterpart? Or how about waiting
a little longer for the prices to come down
on the brushless tools.

I have one Porter Cable 18V battery that I got at
a garage sale. Seems to be good, so there's some
advantage to going that way. I expect that the
18V battery won't fit the 20V tool.

Another thing I discovered is that the vendors
market various combinations of tools. But if you
go to Home Depot and look at the Ryobi line,
the tools you get in the sets with more tools
you don't need appear to be significantly different (better?)
than the tools available in the sets with fewer tools.

I had an interesting conversation with the Lowes sales person.
He claimed that the demo tool batteries failed quickly.
I suggested the tool should shut off when the voltage
reached the safe discharge limit. He claimed the factory told him
that discharging to the limit drastically reduces battery life.
WTF?
If the cutoff is low, battery life is drastically reduced..
Keeping them fully charged, reduces battery life, unless you
store them in the fridge...and warm them up before use.
What's a poor tool user to do? Stay with NiCd?

If I don't replace everything, I still have to maintain
all the tools, batteries, chargers that I have now.
The whole purpose is to downsize the tool collection.


Too much choice, too little info.