Porter-Cable PCCK600LB 20 Volt 1/2-Inch Lithium-Ion Drill-Driver Kit Review

Do you like your drill to be powerful? Do you like your drill to be lightweight? Do you like your drill to look like Optimus Prime? Yes? Then the Porter-Cable PCCK600LB 20 Volt 1/2-Inch Lithium-Ion Drill-Driver Kit may be for you. The Porter-Cable PCCK600LB drill driver is cool looking and provides plenty of power.

Table of Contents
1. Power
2. Torque
3. Chuck
4. Clutch
5. Speed Settings
6. Battery, Charger and Recharge Time
7. Grip/Handle
8. Reverse Switch
9. Built-in LED Work Light
10. Carrying Case and Belt Clip
11. Shortcomings
12. What Others Are Saying
13. Bottom Line
14. Price

Power

The Porter-Cable PCCK600LB is a 20 volt cordless drill.

Torque

This drill provides 330 Unit Watts Out (UWO). Huh? “The Opposite of Handy”, you say, “what is Unit Watts Out? What happened to torque?” Sit down and let us give you enlightenment Grasshopper. Torque is of course the twist of an object – caused by a force – that rotates the object around an axis. For a drill, torque is the twist of the drill bit around the drill shaft. You can think of torque as the turning force. In our lovely Imperial/U.S. measurement system torque can be measured in pound-inches. Here in the U.S. we often reverse the unit name and call them inch-pounds instead. Then awesome confusion comes in to play because energy may also be measured in inch-pounds (although typically foot-pounds), but torque and energy are not the same thing. We’ll spare you the scalar vs. vector argument behind this.

With us so far? Even though we just said torque and energy are not the same thing we’ll contradict that statement and oversimplify things. An inch-pound is the amount of ‘energy’ or ‘work’ needed to exert a force of one pound over a distance of one inch. So how do watts come into play? Watts are a unit of power, which is the rate at which energy is transferred or work is done. There is a time component to power. Watts are part of the International System of Units, not our Imperial/U.S. measurement system, and are defined as one Joule per second. So very, very roughly, think of Unit Watts Out as the amount of torque generated over a period of time, not just in an instantaneous moment of time.

“Who is responsible for this measurement madness?”, you might say. Unit Watts Our seems to be a DeWALT – and consequently all of its sister companies – thing. Maybe they think that it’s more accurate to rate tools on how much energy they can provide over time, rather than a point in time peak force. Anyways, it makes direct specification comparisons difficult since other manufacturers have not adopted UWO.

Chuck

The chuck is 1/2″ and keyless. It is an all metal chuck with no plastic.

Clutch

The adjustable clutch has 23 stops; 22 for driving screws/fasteners and 1 for drilling that never disengages the bit.

Speed Settings

This drill has two speed settings. Setting 2, the high speed, low torque setting for drilling, runs from 0 – 1,600 RPM. Setting 1, the low speed, high torque setting for driving, runs from 0 – 400 RPM. The drill has a variable speed trigger.

Battery, Charger and Recharge Time

The lithium-ion battery stats say it has 1.5 amp-hours of electric charge. Two batteries are provided in the kit. The charger will charge the battery in 40 minutes. There is no high capacity battery (3.0 amp-hours or greater) available for the 20V MAX* line as of the time of this review.

Grip/Handle

Like most cordless drills, this one features a T-style grip. The handle is rubberized. It has rubber bumpers on the side so if you lay it down it won’t scratch your work piece.

Reverse Switch

This drill has an easy to use reverse switch.

Built-in LED Work Light

The LED light on this drill is good.

Carrying Case and Belt Clip

This drill comes with a carrying case and a removable belt clip.

Shortcomings

There aren’t a lot of shortcomings with the drill. We would like to see a high capacity battery available for this drill.

What Others Are Saying

Most of the reviews we’ve seen on Amazon and Lowe’s rate the drill highly. A few specifically mention the high spec to price ratio.

Bottom Line

We find the Porter-Cable PCCK600LB 20 Volt 1/2-Inch Lithium-Ion Drill-Driver Kit to be a very good drill that’s lightweight yet powerful. 4 out of 5.

Price

Amazon puts a lot of effort into keeping their pricing competitive. As of the date of this review, the price was very attractive and they offered free or discounted shipping. Click to check today’s price and see if that’s still the case: