Best Reasonably priced Impact driver bits?

[wau5]

My box of 10 milwaukee shockwave impact driver bits is finished after just half a year non-constant use,
I'm not 100% sure that I would want to order another box of them as half of the bits had some manufacturing defects(weirdly shaped defective heads ) the rest which looked good also performed good,maybe just a bad batch..
either way after a new set of at least 10 , pz2 -50mm bits

What's the best out there at the moment that is reasonably priced? Not more than £1/each in a box let's say? I have seen some wera promos for their hi-end bits but at £5+ each I will feel too guilty when they get destroyed, so would rather not.
P.S I do not need just another box of impact driver bits, I need something better than the milwaukee ones so maybe anyone have tested few brands and can let us in on the secrets?

 

[ntb]

I've used the Milwauke ones - a box of 25 lasted a couple of weeks. A single Wera Bi Torsion (in a Bi Torsion bit holder) lasts me a couple of months. Anything else is a false economy.

 

[Deleted member 174758]

There is only one consistently good brand of impact driver bits that I've used - Wera Impaktor. The problem is that you probably wouldn't regard them as reasonably priced at circa £2.00 a pop (bought 1n 15s) and with their own bit holder really de rigeur for extended life (£14 or so)

 

[Chud]

Another vote for the Wera stuff (the best holder they do for impact drivers is actually Tri-torsion).

I went through quite a few bits until I managed to get some of theirs.

 

[wau5]

Well my wera Impaktor bit I bought has weared down as well after not much use at all, ok slightly better than the dewalt bits and it still kinda works - but it's chewed up and should be thrown away- ordered a pack of 25dewalt bits for £4 so will just treat them as disposibles. certainly a dewalt bit at £0.16 a piece seems much better value than the Impaktor at £1.6 each since the wera seems to last only a bit longer, certainly not even 2x longer! at least the dewalt bits shattered once they were done so you know it's done..

the impact driver I'm using
http://www.powertoolworld.co.uk/mak...ushless-cordless-impact-driver-body-only#gref
so they don't have easy life with me and would probably last me much longer if I were to stick to regular drill driver but what fun is that...

 

[Deleted member 174758]

Well my wera Impaktor bit I bought has weared down as well after not much use at all, ok slightly better than the dewalt bits and it still kinda works - but it's chewed up and should be thrown away- ordered a pack of 25dewalt bits for £4 so will just treat them as disposibles. certainly a dewalt bit at £0.16 a piece seems much better value than the Impaktor at £1.6 each since the wera seems to last only a bit longer, certainly not even 2x longer!

What kind of screws were you using? What were you driving into? Were you actually using the Impaktor bit holder? All these factors make quite a difference to the life of the bits. TBH I and two colleagues use Impaktors for (mainly) first fix work into softwoods with a variety of 18 volt brushless impact drivers (Makita and Milwaukee). Life against DW bits is about x8 to x10 (hard to estimate because I've had several DW bits explode on the first oor second screw before now) - but we are all strong enough to keep the bit well inserted into the screw heads (a major source of bit wear if you don't do it), we do use the matching Impaktor bit holders (without which the bits can wear prematurely) and we try to avoid cheap and nasty screws which round-out too easily and also damage the bits. In general when the bits are done they tell you - by shattering. If you want to use these bits it's no use sticking them in a £1 cheapo bit holder, either, because as you've discovered it don't work

To indicate our scale of usage, one of my colleagues bought a pack of 25 Milwaukee Shockwave PZD#2s in mid November (because he was being a cheapskate, he admits). By Christmas he'd used the lot - and described them as sh***. I bought a pack of 15 PZD#2 Impaktors at about the same time and today I still have half a dozen in the box after busting and replacing one this afternoon. As a point of comparison I use a Makita DTD148, and he has a DTD129

 

[chappers]

agree with everything JAK says, I won't use anything other than wera bi-torsions the ones with the green band, If just boshing in screws first fix, I would expect to go through them at about the same rate as he does, if piloting and screwing I wouldn't expect to break one in six months. To be honest I find they break most often removing screws. It does make a difference using a decent bit holder too.
As for the dewalt ones, they're just false economy and as JAK says they are total 5h1t, I bought a box once and as he said they just shattered on the first screw, I think a broke 5 within an hour and launched the rest of the box across the field and ended up using one from one of those cheapo multi rubberised boxes, that I keep for emergencies because of the odd bits you hardly ever need, and even that lasted the day out.
That said though I also have a dewalt multi-box that I use when I need torx bits or ph2 for drywalls and they have lasted me over a couple of years now and all intact

 

[ray.birch]

To indicate our scale of usage, one of my colleagues bought a pack of 25 Milwaukee Shockwave PZD#2s in mid November (because he was being a cheapskate, he admits). By Christmas he'd used the lot - and described them as sh***. I bought a pack of 15 PZD#2 Impaktors at about the same time and today I still have half a dozen in the box after busting and replacing one this afternoon. As a point of comparison I use a Makita DTD148, and he has a DTD129

In fairness, I bought a pack of these, and they truly are the most awful PZ 2 bits that I've ever had the displeasure of using. Using decent screws, they still feel as though they want to cam out immediately, and the bits are already rounding off within a few screws worth. Fortunately I didn't pay very much for them (perhaps there's a clue there), but I feel as though I'd have had as much success with a block of cheese...

 

[crank39]

Out of interest which DW bits are you referring to, once I came across wera with a bi torsion I've never used anything else, recently though I was given 3 packets of the new dewalt extreme torsion bits as samples to try along with a combi kit, I've still not used mine in any anger and was wondering if you mean these or whether it's the standard impact bits in a tictac box you see on the screwdix counter

http://www.dewalt.co.uk/complete-solutions/technologies/The-impact-torsion-technology.html