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After returning the first one and burning out the second, I disassembled it and the wire clip to the field coil was completely burned out. I own a lot of Bosch power tools but this one is a real clunker. Powerful, but useless for more than a few minutes work at a time. Clearly this is a design flaw with much too small a connector to handle the current this thing draws under load. I burned out two of them on one day while drilling about 12 lag bolt anchor holes in concerete with a 3/4" Bosch masonry bit. Total time on each drill was probably under two hours.
After the warranty expired (No Bosch standing behind it), the drill just quit going in forward - it will run all day in reverse, which isn't much use. The reviewer below seems to me to be a hired marketer. Since I started having problems, I have found a number of reviews and web pages of people complaining about the electrical problems of this drill. Since the cost to repair it, while out of warranty, is darn close to the cost to buy a new one, I have decided not to repair it. I owned this drill for about 1.5 years. In that time, I used it to drill somewhere less than 10 holes - all less than 1/2" in diameter into ordinary concrete.
The drill went through like a knife through butter. Cons - Does not have the quick release chuck that my friend's Hilti has. I bought a 5 pack set of the Bosch blue granite drill bits to go along with it.
Comes with a box to keep the tool and masonry bits. You have to use a key to open and close the chuck on this drill. The drill is good looking unlike some of those ugly looking Hitachi tools.
I bought this drill at Lowes with a pricematch to Amazon.com's price because I couldn't wait to receive it through mail. This drill seemed to drill about as well as my friends Hilti which I used on my house before.Pros - Good performance for the price. Not a big deal for me because I do not regularly use this tool but if I was doing this regularly I would have bought a drill which has "click" chuck which does not need a key.
I used the drill to drill a 6" diameter circle of holes through brick and mortar so I could chisel out a hole in my wall to run a kitchen vent. I had such a hard time trying to get this job done with a regular Craftman C3 cordless drill with cheap masonry bits.
The side handle may be useful when drilling a lot of holes at one time but for me I do not bother. It is great to be able to actually wrap your hand around the key. I am really pleased with this product. The chuck key is huge. The hammer drill comes with a nice case which has a place for a lot of drill bits. One of the first holes I drilled in concrete was drilled too deep as it went so fast. The depth guide vibrated out so I tossed it.
Probably took me 10 minutes each hole because of all of the bit swapping. Caused by the hard aggregate in the slab concrete. I first drilled a 1/4 inch hole. Sure a Hilti would have done a hole in 30 seconds and it should for what it costs. Then drilled it out to 3/4 inch in steps using 1/8 inch larger drill sizes. Needed to make 3, 3/4 inch holes 4 inches deep in a concrete slab.
This drill worked fine using Bosch Blue Granite carbide bits. The Bosch bits took it all in good shape. A 60 year old concrete slab. For the last 3/4 inch hole I used a bit made NOT by Bosch and the carbide tip chipped badly on the second and third holes. Other choice was to rent a Hilti for about half of what the Bosch cost. I mention the age because as concrete ages it continues to harden.
That hole actually was the slowest hole to drill.
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