[hfe]

What is the brand with the best reputation these days?

[midtake]

Tools are weird like text editors where people get religious about some brands over others. But if your hustle is fencing the most reputable and easy-to-move tools, you would probably want to acquire the standard ones you see in Home Depot and Lowe's, such as Dewalt, Milwaukee, Craftsman, etc. Reputation-wise they're all about the same. Personally I like Makita.

[ARandomerDude]

> Tools are weird like text editors where people get religious about some brands over others.

That’s because time is money.

[Tossrock]

If you want gold-plated, there's Hilti, but you're paying a lot extra for a marginal increase in reliability. Milwaukee, Bosch, Makita, and DeWalt are all in the same range, ie contractor/prosumer (and all mostly are manufactured in China). Ryobi is slightly lower but generally fine, ie consumer / price sensitive. Below that is Harbor Freight / no-name electric drill you'd find in am Amazon Basics "essential tools" kit.

[kortex]

Seconded, though I've found the HF Hercules wired line pretty comparable to Dewalt.

But there's a fair amount of inter-model variety within those four/five brands. My 12v Dewalt impact punches above its weight/price and I have two Bosch 18v drills, similar in form factor but one is frankly inferior quality.

[joshu]

festool is up from hilti, maybe

[rocqua]

Milwaukee seems to have a strong reputation. in Europe, mafell too.

[tristanb]

If money is no object for most non-specialized tools the best brand is unequivocally Festool

[timc3]

I would say Festool is a brilliant system, but different manufacturers can make better tools for certain jobs. Mafell’s jigsaw is excellent, Metabo for grinders etc, Hilti SDS plus and Max.

Festool domino system I hear is probably the best, but that is rather specialized.

[NegativeLatency]

Pick the color you like best of the reputable manufactures.

[anthomtb]

I spent hours researching the various pro-sumer level brands when upgrading my tool collection this winter. And settled on Milwaukee. Because red. Ok fine, their track saw played a part. But mostly red.