If you ever found yourself having to decide between an impact driver versus an impact wrench, don’t you wish you have room in your budget for both? Both an impact driver and an impact wrench give you plenty of torque for a wide array of tasks that involve wrenching or driving fasteners, nuts or bolts.
The power wrench will give you torque and power for removing lug nuts, bolts, and other fasteners you would find in your typical automotive maintenance or repair jobs. An impact driver, on the other hand, will give you a sleek, compact tool that will drive even the longest screws much more effortlessly than any drill can.
You might just have enough room in your budget for one of these tools, and you have a choice to make. We all know how important it is to get the right tool for the job, so which of these will fit your needs? It all depends on the circumstances you will be using them.
You might also come to prefer one over the other if you prioritize certain things in your tools. You might go for impact drivers for their lighter weight and better portability, or you might find that you prefer the power and torque output of an impact wrench instead.
Impact Driver Features
Impact drivers have quickly become a standard tool in many garages, workshops and job sites owing to their usefulness and versatility. These tools came into the market later than impact wrenches, so most models of impact drivers you will find on the market come with a few modern features such as LED lights, brushless motors or lithium-ion battery packs.
Impact drivers come with a 1/4-inch hex drive, which lets them accept both hex head fasteners as well as hex shaft bits. They can also use an adapter bit with a hex shaft on one end and a 1/2 inch square drive on the other, which lets them take most of the same sockets that you can also use with an impact wrench.
These tools can drive or remove fasteners, drill holes, and loosen or fasten nuts or bolts with the right bit or adapter. This makes them ideal for a wider variety of projects, and they have a place in the hobby table and around the home as well as in the automotive workshop. They do not have the power to torque the more demanding bolts like lugnuts on a tire though.
Impact Wrench Features
Impact wrenches have been around for a while, and they occupy a niche that few other tools can compete in – consistent high torque in a relatively compact and easy to use handheld tool. Impact wrenches are the tool for choice when efficiency is paramount, just ask any racing pit stop crew.
There are simply no substitutes for an impact wrench when it comes to efficiently removing and refastening lug nuts. They are also useful for industrial settings, heavy duty steel construction, and in machine maintenance shops.
Impact wrenches use a 1/2 inch square drive, which is designed to fit sockets. That’s the primary application of this tool – driving sockets to remove or fasten nuts or bolts.
The features list of an impact wrench may be shorter than what you might come to expect from a modern power tool, but that’s one of the main selling points of impact wrenches. They are simple, ideal for a specific application, and provides plenty of torque and power whenever you need it.
Impact Driver Cost
One of the main advantages of the impact driver is that they are relatively inexpensive to own. This is a great deal for the first-time owner of one of these tools – impact drivers will give you versatility and plenty of torque for many applications, and all for a modest initial investment.
The relative lower cost of impact drivers also means that you have a bit more room in your budget for some of the things you need to make your tool more useful. You can get an entire impact driver set for a reasonable price, or spring for a better model from your favorite manufacturer. A cordless impact driver is not out of the question, too, given how affordable most models are on the market.
Impact Wrench Cost
Impact wrenches are relatively expensive tools, and they can be downright pricey compared to impact drivers. Depending on the projects you find yourself working on, there might not even be a lot of opportunities for you to use your impact wrench in the first place.
Dropping several hundred dollars on a power tool that might just collect dust in your workshop may be too much of a waste – on the other hand, time is money if you’re working for clients. Although there are cheaper models you can get for around $50, a quality impact wrench will last you much longer and will stand up to regular use a lot better.
Impact Driver Size and Weight
Impact drivers are stubby, compact, and lightweight power tools that even users with smaller hands will have little trouble using. A compact impact driver is a small tool even compared to regular power drills, which makes them especially handy for working in very tight spaces.
Impact drivers can weigh less than 3 pounds, and measure less than half a foot from the back to the front. Even the cordless models, with their battery packs, are not too heavy that they become too unwieldy.
Despite their small size and being light for their size, they still pack plenty of torque – you can expect around 1,400 inch pounds of torque (not to be confused with foot lbs.), which is plenty of turning power to do a lot of tasks around the house or workshop but may fall short on some automotive bolts.
Impact Wrench Size and Weight
Impact wrenches, compared to impact drivers, are bulky, heavy, and relative unwieldy tools. This fact makes them a bit of a challenge to bring around with you, especially if you have an air powered impact wrench that needs its own air compressor.
On the other hand, the added size and weight of a more powerful motor translate to more torque and reliable power, which can only help you if you’re dealing with lug nuts that are stuck in place or bolts that have rounded over and rusted.
Most impact wrenches used to be air powered, which means lugging around an air compressor every time you have to use an air wrench on the job site. Nowadays, however, you can find cordless, battery-powered impact wrenches that can offer similar power in a self-contained and more portable tool.
Impact Driver Torque
Impact drivers deliver a significant amount of torque thanks to rapid rotational impacts that they impart on their drive shafts. The amount of torque they can put out do pale in comparison to impact wrenches, but for most household and workshop applications, they provide plenty of turning power on their own.
Compact impact drivers can give you somewhere between 1,200 to 1,600 inch-pounds of torque, depending on the model, which is plenty for driving bolts and screws into wood. Larger impact drivers can deliver more, with corded models able to put out around 2,200 inch-pounds of torque which can be useful for more heavy-duty uses.
Most impact drivers do not come with torque control. If your tool delivers too much torque on a fastener, it can lead to stripped fastener heads or screws sunk in too deep leading to damaged work surfaces. To limit the torque you apply to a fastener, you can use a clutch accessory to reduce stress and damage on the fastener head.
Impact Wrench Torque
Impact wrenches excel at delivering torque, and they deliver lots of it. Depending on the impact wrench model you pick up, you can expect to deliver torque in the range of 12,000 inch-pounds or even more. This makes them ideal for the biggest jobs you will find in an auto mechanic shop, factory, or other industrial settings.
Again, most impact wrenches do not come with built-in torque control. Tightening a bolt or fastener to the correct torque is crucial in metal to metal applications. To control the torque you apply to a fastener, you can use a torque control extension bar, or what is also known as a torque stick, to limit the torque you deliver to a fastener to a preset amount.
Impact Driver Applications
Impact drivers deliver high torque, which you will find useful in a lot of applications in the woodworking workshop, garage, and at the job site. They can drive screws and tighten nuts more efficiently than regular drills, thanks to the hammering action they impart on the fastener.
A weighted ridged chuck inside the impact driver stores some of the rotational power provided by the motor, and delivers it into the drive shaft in a very brief amount of time with every slam. This impact adds a more powerful way to turn the drive shaft and the fastener compared to just trying to turn them at a steady RPM the way that regular drills do.
As an all-around power tool, impact drivers occupy something of a middle ground between a regular drill or power driver and the more powerful impact wrench. They provide high torque for driving applications, while also retaining the same form factor and portability that users have come to expect from their handheld power tools.
Plus, they also come with a mechanism to isolate the handle of the tool from the impact delivered on the drive shaft, which makes them very comfortable to use.
The main application of the impact driver for most homeowners is for driving long screws into harder materials. If you’re building a deck or a fence, you will appreciate the almost effortless way that an impact driver can sink a screw into seasoned wood, a task that will take a regular screwdriver a longer time to do, if it can do it at all.
Impact drivers are also a go-to tool for professionals who work with steel framing, and the hundreds to thousands of nuts and bolts needed to put together this type of structure. The same goes for contractors who work with HVAC systems and industrial machines.
Garage workshops, automotive maintenance and repair shops, and car restorers will likewise appreciate the efficiency that an impact driver can give them for most tasks and bolts/nuts.
If you are working on a project that entails driving long screws into hardwood, you will appreciate an impact driver as a practical tool that enhances your productivity. On the other hand, if you are working on tasks that deals with fasteners and a lot of metal to metal joints, having an impact driver is practically a necessity for you.
Impact Wrench Applications
While impact drivers offer a bit of something for everyone, impact wrenches are a tool on the other extreme - they have a narrower range of uses, but they are simply the best tools for what they can do.
There is simply no substitute for an impact wrench when it comes to removing a particularly stubborn nut, and if you are an auto mechanic or a heavy machinery technician, you will find an impact wrench to be an irreplaceable tool in these cases.
Impact wrenches are designed to efficiently deliver high torque, and little else. This may make them less than suitable for lighter work – in fact, using an impact wrench is usually overkill when it comes to any but the biggest of household jobs. They are designed for things like lag bolts, lug nuts, and other types of heavy-duty fasteners that require a lot of torque to move.
Impact wrenches really do come to their own in tasks where power and efficiency are paramount. They are undisputed when it comes to quickly loosening and refastening lug nuts, and that’s why impact wrenches have become a signature tool when it comes to automotive racing.
Just like impact wrenches, they are also built to isolate the hammering action and keep it from reaching the handle. Despite their size and power, impact wrenches are actually easy to handle.
They make bolting and unbolting very easy, even on the biggest of lag bolts or screws. If you have an impact wrench, you can also use it to do things like building the larger parts of your deck, or for quickly changing the tires on your car.
