Originally Posted by Andy Hall

In the UK they are good quality and good value for money. Whether the same
quality is elsewhere I don't know.[/color]

They are average quality at best everywhere.

The manufacturer is Techtronic Industries, formerly of Hong Kong.

Techtronic has acquired the rights to a number of brands of varying
types an qualities over the last few years.

http://www.ttigroup.com/business/brands.php


At the upper end, they have Milwaukee, which is a contractor quality
product in the U.S. and had started to appear in Europe via AEG (for
which they also bought the power tools brand).

In the middle they have Ryobi power tools, which is *not* a Japanese
product any longer. Ryobi corporation of Japan does still make
certain industrial products such as diecastings. The Techtronic
Ryobi power tools are sold in Europe and most of the rest of the world
with the Ryobi brand. In the US, it's exclusively through Home Depot
and they also make some of the Ridgid product set for HD.

If you look at Ryobi web sites across the world, you will find that
acquisition by TTI is either underway or has happened.

At the cheap end, they have Power Devil, Royal and Dirt Devil and a
couple of US only brands.


In other words, this is a set of Chinese products at different price
points and qualities.

..andy