Cool Design and gadgets Lastest news*: I bought the set at HD in NH and paid $299.00 for the LXT211

11/01/2012

I bought the set at HD in NH and paid $299.00 for the LXT211

So far these have been good tools, but the batteries tend to fail early, after maybe a dozen charges. I checked around on the web and found out there is a design bug in the battery that makes them fail early. Makita knows about it and will quietly replace batteries with under 150 charges on them, regardless of warranty.

They seem to fail if left unused for a while, then put on the charger. The symptom is flashing green and red lights on the charger, with a fairly new battery. The reason is a design bug in the control board of the battery. It's always the first cell that fails, gets deep discharged, because its the only one used to supply power to the control board. So it shows a deep discharge, while the other cells are charged. If you try to charge it 3 times with a deep discharged cell, the control board bricks the battery. It will register as bad, even though there is plenty of useful life left.

So if this happens, send them to the Makita Service Center for replacement.

If Makita won't replace them, you can probably charge them and use them on a clone charger that doesn't read the control board. Clone chargers cost about $60 on the big auction site.

Until Makita fixes this, I would not advise buying these tools.First off, I did not buy this on Amazon. .I bought the set at HD in NH and paid $299.00 for the LXT211 I saw the white BFD set for $279.00 at the same place and figured, $20.00 extra and get three amp batteries?!? Anyways, I looked on-line at Amazon.com (have used this ste before and am very happy with my purchases) and saw it advertised for $264.00 Wow, I havent seen it that cheap since. I printed the sheet went to HD and they price matched Amazon and gave me the difference back! Now onto the set: I have built a couple of heavy duty work shop tables using both the Hammer and the Impact drivers. I have also built some small decorative shelving units and wow... I bought the set and charged the batteries once. ONCE. I have not charged them since. I dont need to, how cool is that? I bought this set to replace a Ridgid 18v lithium drill set and there is seriously no competition. I am not a contractor but felt that buying contractor grade tools would be a good bet for the money I set aside and I am not sorry. Trigger control on botht he drill and driver excellent you really dont need to practice too much. The LED light is incredibly bright and stays over for 12 seconds after you stop pressing the trigger. One other thing, I spoke with Makita directly as the HD did not know, and I was told that I should only use the 3.0a batteries, not the smaller ones with this set. So I will be ordering those batteries here as you cant beat the price. The only gripe that I have with both tools is the lack of on-board storage for drill bits but thats not a gripe about the quality, power or durability that I have experienced. One other note, I purchased the Milwaukee 18v M18 compact drill and impact driver set. Those tools feel heavy duty and the impact driver is a great solid powerful tool. I had two problems with the drill which caused me to immediately spend the extra money for the LXT211. 1- the speed selector on the top of the drill became stuck between speeds. I was able to play with the torque settings and it immediately switched back. 2- the chuck made a buzzing sound (something was rubbing in there) when I held it in place to tighten a bit, that happened after about ten minutes of playing with it. I did not feel that those are good signs for a ten minute old drill. I am not a fan of dewalt and I had never used a Bosch drill but I have read reviews on all of these and the Makita was the way to go for me. I hope this helps in your decision making!

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Cool Design and gadgets Lastest news*

11/01/2012

I bought the set at HD in NH and paid $299.00 for the LXT211

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