What you get for the money
It’s the cheapest skin in the aisle, so I went in expecting to be let down, and I just wasn’t. The Ozito PXC puts 150Nm of torque in your hand — torque is twisting force, and 150Nm is roughly three times what a decent drill manages — which is enough to sink long decking screws and coach bolts without the tool bogging down or chewing the head off the screw. Is the dearer Makita gear better made and going to last longer? Yes, and Matt will remind you of it at every opportunity. But none of that changes what this driver does on a Saturday afternoon: it drives screws, cleanly, for the kind of money you’d otherwise leave on a single trade tool.
How much grunt does it have?
Plenty, and it’s the dependable kind. That 150Nm walks batten screws into framing pine, tightens up the bolts on the swing set that’s been wobbling since Christmas, and keeps going through a deck’s worth of screws without bogging down. The one thing you’re giving up for the price is the motor: it’s brushed, which is the older design where little carbon blocks rub against the spinning part to feed it power. Brushed motors run hotter, drink through a battery quicker, and won’t live as long as the brushless ones in the pricier tools. For a driver that comes out on weekends, I’d make that trade every time. For one that has to earn its keep five days a week, I wouldn’t, and the price points you to which of those jobs it was built for.
What’s it like to use?
Nicer than the price tag has any right to feel. The variable-speed trigger gives you enough of a slow start that you can ease a screw in rather than firing it clean through the board, and the reverse backs out all the mangled, half-stripped screws left behind by whoever owned the place before you. (In my case, at the Traralgon house, that’s a lot of screws.) The 6.35mm quick-connect hex chuck takes any standard hex-shank bit and lets you swap them one-handed, which you’ll appreciate the third time you’re up a ladder.
The detail I didn’t expect at this price is the tri-beam LED — three little lights ringing the chuck instead of the usual single one underneath, so the bit isn’t sitting in its own shadow while you’re trying to find the screw. Plenty of dearer drivers still get that wrong. And then there’s the noise: it’s loud, the way every impact driver ever made is loud. That hammering racket is the mechanism doing its job, not a fault — but your ears and the neighbour over the back fence will both know exactly when you’re using it.
The warranty is the best part of the deal
Here’s the twist nobody expects from the cheapest tool in the aisle: it has the best warranty in the aisle. Every PXC tool carries a five-year replacement warranty — not a repair, a replacement. The tool dies in year four, you walk it back to Bunnings with your receipt, and you walk out with a new one. Batteries and chargers get three. Two things will trip you up if you let them: keep that receipt somewhere safe, because the faded thermal docket in the bottom of your toolbox is no good to anyone, and only ever run official PXC batteries in it — the clone packs that turn up online void the warranty outright, and they’re usually the reason a cheap tool dies young anyway. Five years of replacement cover on a tool this cheap is a big part of why it’s worth buying.
Should you buy it?
If your year is the occasional deck board, a fence panel, a bit of flat-pack and a firm refusal to pay trade prices for any of it — then yes, easily, buy it. The 7.6 is me being straight with you about the rest: the build, the feel in the hand and the thin top end of the platform all sit a class below the Makita, and the day your projects get more ambitious, you’ll feel each of those gaps in turn. But plenty of sheds never see that day, and if yours is one of them, you’ll wonder what the extra money was ever for.
Specifications
- Voltage
- 18V (PXC platform)
- Max torque
- 150Nm
- Chuck
- 6.35mm (1/4 inch) quick-connect hex
- Speed control
- Variable speed, reversing
- Work light
- Tri-beam LED
- Sold as
- Skin only — battery and charger extra
