Can You Find Good Deals On High-Quality Power Tools At Costco?

If you're a Costco shopper with an occasional need for reliable, name-brand power tools, there are two things you need to know: Yes, you can occasionally find a great deal on power tools, but no, Costco should almost never be your first stop for them. 

The reason for these two concrete facts is that unlike Sam's Club and its Cat Power Tools connection, Costco doesn't generally offer anything like a comprehensive selection of power tools. Current power tool offerings are thin at best, at most times ... but again, you can sometimes find very good tools at excellent prices. Browsing the Costco website's power tools page can turn up a thing or two you'd recognize as power tools without squinting, but recently, the page has been dominated by power scrubbers and the occasional drill. Whether these qualify as high-quality, nicely-priced power tools depends on how much you want them to qualify. 

That said, with an open mind, we're going to look at a handful of power tool deals that Costco offers, and assess if they're worth your time and money. Some of these are good finds, and others ... well, perhaps less so. Let's dive in.

Sometimes, as Freud never said, a power tool is just a power tool. Such is the case of the Campbell Hausfeld air compressor, a wheeled 8-gallon affair that certainly looks like something you'd have in the corner of a well-appointed workshop. Aside from minor quality control issues hinted at by reviewers, it's a reasonable choice for a household garage or a DIYer's workshop. The 65-dBA compressor is reasonably quiet for a piece of equipment that was traditionally deafening. And its ability to deliver 125 PSI and 2.4 CFM (at 90 PSI) makes it suitable for driving a pneumatic stapler or brad gun and for inflating tires and the like. An 8-gallon tank means it can hold enough air to let you blow off a dusty garage floor, and the wheels are important for a device that weights 67.7 lbs.

The price is decent as well. At $139.99, it's more than $100 cheaper than the same device at Home Depot. It's a reasonably good tool at a good price, so let's count this in the "win" column for Costco and move on.

Ah, Dewalt. A company known for legit power tools. DeWalt's consumer-targeted vacuums certainly look like Dewalt tools, though not much like the jobsite wet/dry vacuums listed on the Dewalt website, which tend to be either squat plastic affairs or some indistinct science-y module that might be toted around by a sci-fi character in a space suit. Instead, the DeWalt 8-gallon wet/dry vacuum sold at Costco gets its heavy-duty cred from a stainless barrel that forms the vacuum's body, and from specs that aren't that different from the pro-level Dewalt models. The vac features a 5 peak horsepower motor, casters, a washable filter, and a bevy of hoses and attachments.

The $94.99 Costco model is roughly comparable to the professional 9-gallon Dewalt vacuum offered on Amazon, but $35 cheaper. And reviewers seem to like it about as well. It gets 4.6 stars on the Costco site (on 536 ratings) and on Amazon (on 340 ratings). Just remember that the Costco model is manufactured by something called Alton Industry, while the standard Dewalt vacuum is listed on Amazon as being made at a DeWalt factory. Whether that matters is probably a function of how much you trust the products' reviewers.

Here's where things start to get subjective. A cordless screwdriver might once have been scoffed at by a class of tradesmen who wore their repetitive strain injuries like a debilitating badge of honor, but the ubiquity of the impact driver (and the cost of worker's comp insurance) have carved out a place for cordless screwdrivers in the professional toolbox. The question here is whether the two cordless electric screwdrivers offered by Costco — the  HOTO and the Fanttik–stack up — and it's not clear that they do. 

The 3.7-volt Fanttik and 3.6-volt HOTO certainly aren't going to win any awards for power delivery compared with modern 12-volt screwdrivers (or, frankly, with 20-volt drills used as screwdrivers). Torque isn't specified for either device. Both have internal, non-replaceable batteries (but were you really going to buy into a Fanttik or HOTO battery platform anyway?). 

Here's the thing: Despite their prices ($49.99 for the Fanttik and $34.99 for the HOTO) it seems like reviewers love these things. The Fanttik gets 4.5 stars at Costco and 4.7 stars at Amazon on an average of 659 ratings. The HOTO fares even slightly better at 4.7 stars on 1,315 average ratings. Reviews for both products share a commonality you don't often see in tool reviews, which is a focus on design aesthetics, with their fans often talking explicitly about the beauty of the devices. Take from that what you will. 

Of course, these current offerings — an air compressor, a wet/dry vac, and two electric screwdrivers – aren't exactly the essential list of carpentry tools for your next DIY project. Costco does sometimes carry more traditional brands and tools that are more likely to be thought of as power tools, like the DeWalt 20V MAX reciprocating saw kit, but this has been out of stock for some time, and at $199.99, is priced the same as at other retailers. That said, if you're lucky, you might walk into Costco and find the occasional solid deal, like the Craftsman 20V Max brushless 4-tool kit that was recently offered for $149.97. The kit, while it was available, included three brushless 20-volt tools and was about half the price of comparable 20-volt brushless kits. Another good example was the (also out of stock) Dremel 4000 rotary tool kit, priced at $69.97, which typically retails for around $200.

Always keep in mind that stock may vary at any given location. And even if Costco isn't going to win any awards for a great power tool selection, there are many perks to membership, and you might still be able to fill in a gap in your current collection (or find a tool that is the perfect gift for a homeowner) if your timing is just right.