You May Want To Reconsider Buying These Harbor Freight Icon Tools

Harbor Freight's reputation for selling subpar tools mostly comes from the inappropriate choices of professional tool-users. In the distant past, HF's offerings weren't really suitable for constant, heavy use. But in recent years, credible pro-quality tools are among the many brands of tools Harbor Freight owns — especially the Icon brand, which is often referred to as a challenger to Snap-On's high-priced hand tool supremacy. Icon is a premium hand tool brand, parallel to Harbor Freight's popular Hercules power tool line. But the brand is not perfect, and there are a few tools you might want to steer clear of, from relatively low-stakes items like screwdrivers and work lights to heavyweight tools like swivel impact sockets.

And while you can certainly buy inferior products like much of the Pittsburgh line (and weird novelties like its ¼-inch hex drive "meme" ratchet set or the gold-plated items we'll discuss below), the company is also capable of brilliance. Consider the 10-piece 10-millimeter metric essential socket set, which gives you the common 10-millimeter socket size in every form factor you can think of. Genius. But the professional's bread and butter is performance at ordinary tasks with ordinary tools, and that's where Icon typically shines. The brand makes highly regarded torque wrenches, various ratchet styles, various wrench styles, and even knives.

The kicker is that DIYers use pro tools, too, and Harbor Freight knows it. The Icon hex-bit ratchet isn't made for pros, after all, but for homeowners looking to stop assembling IKEA furniture with Allen wrenches. Now let's dig a little deeper.

Icon ratchets are well-known for their quality, even among mechanics who seem reluctant to admit it. But the one exception seems to be the Icon ¼-inch Drive Professional Low-Profile Ratchet, which has a couple of issues. One is that the force it takes to flip the directional switch is unusually high. And while that might not be an issue for you, the failure load — the amount of torque at which the ratchet fails — is fairly low for this ratchet. The Icon ratchet has a solid drive rather than a quick-release drive with a button to release your socket, and these are usually stronger. But in Project Farm's testing, the ¼-inch Icon fails with both the main gear stripping and the pawl breaking, suggesting the ratchet's internals aren't as strong as its drive.

But the real problem with this ratchet — and the reason it has a sketchy reputation among online mechanics — is the amount of back drag it exhibits. If you've ever used a ratchet, you probably know what back drag is, even if you don't know the term. It's the amount of force it takes when reversing the ratchet for the pawl to release so that the handle moves freely without affecting the socket. High levels of back drag can make a ratchet tiring to use, but worse, it can frustratingly cause you to accidentally undo some of the progress you just made by turning the socket backward. And the Icon ¼-inch drive ratchet has an unseemly level of back drag. Other Icon ratchets also have back drag problems, but not in combination with the stiff directional switch and ease of failure.

Harbor Freight offers the same ratchet and a ⅜-inch version in gold-plated special editions. The luxe versions are simply offered as pro-quality ratchets. Besides the Trump Towers vibe, the other big difference between the fold and chrome versions of these ratchets is the price: The ¼-inch drive chrome ratchet goes for $29.99, and while you shouldn't buy it, you certainly shouldn't consider the same ratchet in gold at $44.99. The ⅜-inch ratchets run $54.99 with gold and $39.99 without ... a strange upgrade, since gold plating is easily worn away even on casually worn jewelry.

It's difficult to grok why anyone frugal enough to shop at Harbor Freight would bite on what is essentially a $50 gag gift. Reviewers seem to really love the gold versions, scoring both .2 stars higher than the chrome versions. Some reviewers don't seem to be aware that they're reviewing the gold-plated version, while others seem to think of it strictly as a gift, either as a novelty or a commemorative gift celebrating a retirement or similar. That would seem to be the most sensible reason for buying the special edition ratchets — to put them on a mantel and enjoy the memories of a long, knuckle-busting career. 

Harbor Freight wasn't the first to dream up this kind of thing. For its 75th anniversary, Craftsman issued a gold-plated ratchet in a wood display box, and it doubtless made a great gift as well. But what such a gift is not is a tool, and since that's what we're talking about here, we'll steer you in another direction for your ratchets.

While we're talking about ratchets, let's share a skeptical word or two about Harbor Freight's impact-rated swivel socket sets, available in ½-inch drive and ⅜-inch drive versions. Impact-rated swivel sockets and universal joint adapters have a tough job. They're designed to transfer as much impact driver torque as possible through a wide range of angles, and typically through rather thin cross sections of steel that make up the universal joint ... and also constitute a possible point of failure. While the Icon swivel sockets are generally well-regarded by purchasers, testers have a few problems with these specific demands.

YouTube's rigorous Torque Test Channel included an Icon swivel socket set in its evaluation of 14 brands, and it was the only one that actually broke during usability testing. At impact wrench speeds, jagged metal shrapnel is no joke. Torque Test also found the sockets had below-average torque transfer ... the second lowest in its testing. Other reviewers found that the sockets wear unusually quickly and several noted that the Icon socket sets tend to skip sizes or have a narrow range of sizes included in its sets, unlike the inexpensive GearWrench sets that are more complete. The Icon sockets are chrome molybdenum steel ... weaker than chrome vanadium, but not uncommon. The Icons also have thinner walls than a comparable Tekton set. But while that can indicate weakness, it's also considered an asset for sockets since some counterbores are not much larger than the bolt heads themselves. On the whole, all of this might add up to a negative for frequent or pro users of Icon's universal-joint sockets.

At first glance, the Icon Slim Bar Work Light with its knurled aluminum base looks like it might be a more durable alternative to cheap plastic work lights ... and, at $39.99, the Icon isn't exactly cheap. But this work light suffers from all manner of ways that such a tool can have sub-par specs. According to Motor City Metal, it has more plastic and less flexibility than its swiveling Braun sibling at HF. The rechargeable battery in the Icon is not user-replaceable, which might turn out to not matter.

That's because the work light might not last nearly as long as its battery. And possibly not as long as the battery's runtime, which is advertised as 3 hours at 800 lumens and comes reasonably close to that. The real problem with the Icon's longevity is its build quality, which YouTube's Torque Test Channel found to be comical. The Icon failed the channel's drop test on its first drop, something the tester had never seen before, which earned the work light an unprecedented 0 of 10 stars.

Nothing is more fundamental to most mechanical work than the common screwdriver. But the common screwdriver is so, well, common that they seem to have become something of a commodity, with cheap, reasonably good screwdrivers available everywhere at very low costs. And this is exactly where the Icon Professional Mechanics Screwdriver Set bites itself on the shank. The infinitely fun YouTube car channel Donut did a comprehensive (and occasionally dangerous) series of tests on screwdriver sets, including sets from HF brands' Pittsburgh ($8 per set), Doyle ($25), and Icon ($50), alongside comparable sets from Husky ($22), Klein Tools ($50), and Snap-On ($200).

The tests proved both that screwdrivers aren't (yet) commodities and that you don't necessarily get what you pay for. HF's Doyle screwdrivers outperformed the field overall and did better than Icon's offering in coating quality, driving screws, and torque testing. Doyle matched Icon in a prying test. And, speaking of screwdriver misuse, hammering the butt of a screwdriver isn't a good idea. But you do it anyway, so Donut does it too. And Icon beat the Doyle here, matching Snap-On and being bested by Klein Tools. In all, the Icon set performed admirably ... but the Doyle set from HF did better than any set overall, at half the price of the Icons and ⅛ the price of the Snap-Ons. So you might reasonably choose an Icon set, but the cheaper Doyle set would be a wiser choice.