antgel wrote:

I have been using it to drill through joists with a 16mm flat wood bit
- I thought wood drilling was the least tiresome form of drilling, but
apparently not in this case. After a full charge, it's running out of
puff after intermittent use over a couple of hours.

How many holes does it do?

Spade bits are not the easiest things to turn and so sap quite a bit of
power. Making sure it is sharp helps (quick lick on a bench grinder from
time to time will do it).

Are my expectations of a 12V cordless too much or is the product not
performing as well as I might expect? Put another way, should I return

Hard one to call - depends on the quality of the tool really... chances
are you are running into the limitations of a low end battery pack with
poorly matched cells. The result is that they discharge at different
rates and the ability to supply the peek current will fall off quite
soon. Drilling smaller holes with an ordinary drill bit does not require
as much torque as the spade bit, and hence it may carry on doing these
for some time even with the pack at less than full capacity. On the
spade bit however it may not have the torque to turn the bit.

it and get a beefier cordless drill / driver, or just get a cheapie
variable-speed mains drill?

Cheap mains drills with good variable speed are actually not that easy
to find. An old B&D design with the metal gearbox would do nicely on the
slower (fixed) speed (about 900 rpm) they have plenty of grunt)

As Mike suggested, send one of the battery packs to www.recell.co.uk,
you will likely find that moves the tool into a whole new league.

PS I know that Makita / Dewalt and the like are the nuts, but they are
out of my price range and not necessary at my current level...

The former may be true, but "your current level" is probably a little
beyond the budget tools anticipated target market.

(hence why most chippies will buy a decent bosch/makita etc for this
type of work).


--
Cheers,

John.

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