'Great Quality': The Harbor Freight Cordless Impact Driver Shoppers Have Loved For Years

If you appreciate quality tools at a low price, you may already be familiar with Harbor Freight's highly recommended Bauer power tool brand. Harbor Freight sells Bauer-branded indoor and outdoor cordless power tools, carrying more than 75 different products that use a 20-volt battery system. DIYers can select among drills, saws, sanders, and more with Bauer, which are sold exclusively at Harbor Freight.

One highly rated Bauer tool is its 20-Volt Cordless 1/4-Inch Impact Driver ($40 for the tool only). It has an impressive 4.9-star rating on the Harbor Freight website from customer reviewers, and 99% of them would recommend buying this item. The product is a staple of the discount hardware retailer's Bauer lineup with favorable customer reviews dating back to 2022. "Great build quality and power," one customer wrote. "Feels good in your hand. For the price, [you] can not beat it."

If you're a frequent visitor to the Harbor Freight website, though, you may have noticed a Bauer cordless impact driver listing page with a "new" tag. This isn't actually a new tool, but it's a new kit that some DIYers will appreciate. The Bauer 20V Cordless 1/4-Inch Impact Driver Kit includes a 20-volt 2 Ah battery and charger ($70). Rather than buying the tool-only version of this impact driver and having to scramble for a compatible battery, you receive everything in the battery-and-tool kit that you need to begin working right away.

Before you buy an impact driver, you should understand that these tools have a look and purpose similar to drills. However, the impact driver delivers higher levels of torque and a faster rotational speed than drills, delivering better performance when driving screws. Harbor Freight also offers a Bauer 20V Cordless Drill for $40, but it has slightly lower customer satisfaction ratings on the Harbor Freight website than the Bauer 20V impact driver.

The Bauer 20V impact driver has three speed modes available, which lets you match the torque and rotational speed you need to the job at hand. It offers a maximum rotational speed of 3,200 RPM and a maximum torque of 2000 inch-pounds. One Harbor Freight customer reviewer says the power available with the Bauer tool was important for daily project. "We use it every single day building fences and deck and we are hard on them. We drop them, push them, submerge them in water, mud, etc and clean them off and keep using them."

The new kit ships with a 2 Ah battery. Harbor Freight says the Bauer impact driver can install 424 deck screws on a single charge with a 5 Ah battery. A 5 Ah battery should run for 2.5 times as long as a 2 Ah battery when using a consistent amperage, so you should be able to install about 170 deck screws on one charge with the 2 Ah battery in the new kit. If you need a higher capacity battery, you might prefer purchasing the Bauer impact driver tool alone and separately purchasing a Bauer 20V 5 Ah Battery and Charger Kit ($100 at Harbor Freight).

At $70, the new kit containing the Bauer impact driver, 2 Ah battery, and charger represents a good value compared to other Bauer impact driver options at Harbor Freight. If you purchase all three components in the kit separately, you'll pay about $110, 57% more than purchasing the kit. The tool alone costs $40, a 2 Ah Bauer battery costs $35, and a Bauer 20V charger costs $35. Because you'll save so much money by purchasing the Bauer impact driver kit compared to buying all three components separately, you may not even have to wait until the best times of the year to score deals on Harbor Freight tools to buy the kit. 

The hardware retailer also offers a kit that contains the impact driver, a 1.5 Ah battery, and charger for $70, but you receive a larger capacity battery with the new kit for the same price. If you purchase the tool and the Bauer 5 Ah battery and charger combination separately, your total cost is about $140. That's double the cost of the kit with the 2 Ah battery, but you receive a battery with 2.5 times greater capacity.

If you already own some Bauer power tools and 20V batteries, you might not want to purchase the new kit. The Bauer 20V batteries are interchangeable among various Bauer power tools, so you might not need the extra battery and charger to start using your new impact driver right away.