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The Dremel 3000 is powerful, comes in a durable case, and includes a wide array of accessories. Read More
The Dremel 8220 is a high performer and a good value in kit form. Read More
The Goxawee G4007-US has a lot going for it. It includes over 100 pieces for close-up work, a cutting shield, and a few replacement brushes. Read More
The Wen 2305 is affordable and a good tool for lighter work like sanding or polishing. Read More
The Ryobi One+ P460 is a great tool for buffing. engraving, sanding, and carving. Read More
Rotary tools have a lot of uses for home improvement—whether you're a casual user or a serious tradesperson. For tasks that are delicate or close-up, it's common to use a rotary tool to cut, polish, and carve. Many people even use them to trim their pet's nails. An ideal rotary tool will combine a powerful motor, compact size, and lightweight build with a wide variety of high-quality accessories and attachments to deliver a versatile tool.
To find the best, we put a well-rounded group of products from popular brands and different price ranges through a battery of tests to give us a good idea of what kind of versatility and capability you can expect. Our results show that the Dremel 3000 2/28 kit (available at Amazon for $81.99) and the cordless Dremel 8820 (available at Home Depot) are the best rotary tools you can buy. The Dremel brand defined this type of tool many years ago, and the high-quality, comprehensive kits are backed by solid performance.
The Dremel 3000 is easy to handle and comes with a wide assortment of accessories.
Although the Dremel 3000 2/28 didn’t actually score on the top of this list, we think it deserves to be called our best overall rotary tool because it's powerful and extremely versatile. This smart dremel kit seems to anticipate your needs and includes many features and accessories you're going to need before you know you know you need them.
Included with this Dremel rotary tool are an assortment of attachments for sanding, grinding, polishing, and cutting. Plus, it's all packed into a durable, well-designed case that delivers on quality as much as the actual tool does.
Everything has been well thought out with the Dremel 3000, from the way tools are changed, to the design of the tool itself, with a continuously variable speed control that's easy to reach while in use, not to mention the deep universe of accessories and attachments increased versatility. The tool is also sized just right, leading us to believe that it was designed with input from experienced users.
The Dremel 3000 is also easy to handle. Its 1.2 amp motor has enough power to do just about any small task you can throw at it. Just remember to match the correct attachment to the work to get the best results.
While none of these tools were all that happy cutting shapes out of our thick piece of birch plywood using a spiral bit, the Dremel put in one of the best showings for that test. It’s worth mentioning that the motor brushes of this tool are replaceable, which will extend the life of the tool, and Dremel stands behind its rotary tool with a two-year warranty.
Comes in a durable case
The Dremel 8220 is a high performer and a good value in kit form.
Take everything we said about the Dremel 3000 and apply it to this cordless version.
It’s amazing when you can get 12 volts to do what other cordless tools need 20 volts or more for. While easier carving, etching, or sanding tests were no problem, the lower voltage provided by the compact battery made us question this tool's ability to stand up to our more challenging cutting tasks, but it rose to meet the challenge. While it may seem pricier than some of the other options, the Dremel 8220 N/30H is a comprehensive cordless kit well worth the extra cash.
Included with purchase is a nice case, the rotary tool itself, a 12V MAX lithium-ion battery, charger, and selection of accessories. It's also useful immediately out-of-the-box, with no hidden additional purchases for battery or charger required, unlike some of the other options we tested. Without a cord, the Dremel 8220 is also exceptionally portable and versatile. And there didn't seem to be a performance penalty for choosing the cordless option, either.
The Dremel 8220 delivers the same 5,000 to 35,000 rpm speed range as our overall winner, and it feels just as strong with a fully-charged battery too. The performance holds up under most loads, but you are limited by how long the battery life holds out. That said, additional batteries are available to keep you working. You'll pay more for a cordless rotary tool that can keep up with a corded model, but the Dremel 8220 is definitely a high performer and a good value in kit form.
Limited to how long the battery holds out
The Goxawee G4007-US has a lot of appeal. It includes a flex shaft, more than 100 attachment pieces, a three-jaw chuck and cutting shield, and even replacement brushes for the electric motor. Despite all the bells and whistles, the quality just isn’t that great.
The G4007 doesn't seem like the kind of tool that's going to last many years. While the flex shaft is a nice feature to have, it probably wouldn’t get much use and the included tools don’t seem like the highest quality either.
During testing we had trouble getting the sanding drums to be snug on the mandrel attachments, even though we tightened them quite a bit. On the spec sheet, this dremel’s 1.3 amp motor is competitive with the best, and its speed control dials between 8,000 to 30,000 rpm. However, we still think it’s best considered as a light-duty, occasional-use tool.
Includes more than 100 pieces and replacement brushes
Not great for long-term use
The WEN brand has been around since the 1950s but has more recently started popping up with value-priced tools of all kinds. The price of the WEN 2305 is a bargain, especially considering it includes the 80-piece accessory set, flex shaft, and a hard shell case. The tool itself doesn't feel flimsy, but it did feel cheaper than some others during testing. Its 1 amp motor is down on power as well.
The WEN 2305 and its included tools are probably fine for lighter jobs, though the assorted attachments don't have the same gloss of quality as higher-priced kits. Its case is also smaller than others, providing less room to grow. But for the price, the savings have to come from somewhere, and this kit is likely to satisfy many buyers' occasional needs with DIY projects around the house.
Feels cheaper than other rotary tools
Ryobi tools are smartly-designed with above-average quality. The Ryobi 18V One+ Cordless Rotary Tool fits that description perfectly. It's also one of two rotary tools we tried that uses a cable drive between the motor and the tool itself, which locks you into a benchtop workspace scenario. That said, the benefit of the flexible cable drive is that the tool itself is small in your hand, so it felt more like using a pen than a power tool.
The tool itself is great at the small stuff like buffing, engraving, sanding, and carving up close. We also liked that the mechanical bits are easily accessible in another housing that you can attach to the back wall of a workstation for regular use. What’s great about Ryobi is that 18V One+ batteries power an entire family of tools, so many people may already have a battery and charger they can use for this tool. If not, you’ll need to add the cost of those items to the price of the tool itself, which makes the Ryobi kind of expensive compared to the other choices here.
While quality and design put this rotary tool above the bargain options, and it’s pleasant to use on the light-duty tasks it's best suited for, it choked on harder tests, and it's not meant to be as portable as others we tried.
Batteries power other Ryobi tools
Walmart’s tool brand, Hart, offers a large lineup of outdoor equipment, power tools and more, including a cordless rotary tool. Thoughtfully designed and well-made, we think that this rotary tool is best suited for the hobbyist craft bench. That's because of its design that uses a flex shaft between the motor and tool end. There's also a slot in the side for storing the case of tools and tool holders on the front of the unit for commonly-used attachments. Designed for a fixed installation, you could easily hang this up as part of a tool bench.
The 20V battery also makes for a clean installation without having to string cords everywhere. That said, we did have a few nitpicks with this tool.
The downside is that the Hart 20V cordless rotary tool is definitely not suited for more difficult tasks. The shaft drive is more delicate than the direct motor drives of other units we tested so it just doesn’t have the power. It's also on the expensive side, and that's just for the tool itself as no battery or charger comes with it. You end up spending quite a bit to get the tool, battery, and a charger.
For delicate work in the hobby shop, the Hart Cordless Rotary Tool may be just the thing, but it's expensive and less versatile than the others we tested.
Not suited for heavy-duty tasks
With 5 amps of power, the Dewalt DW660 is the strongest rotary tool we tested. Rugged, chunky, and designed for lots of hard use, there's little doubt that this tool would hold up to daily action. On the other hand, this tool's mission in life is mostly as a rotary cutting tool, using spiral bits. It’s also well-suited for cutting through sheets of material when matched with the right bit.
Included with this tool is a cutting depth guide, and the large tool-free collet is durable for longevity and easy tool changes on the fly. Despite clearly being designed for hard work, the DW660 isn't a versatile rotary tool, but it isn’t meant to be.
Most notable about this tool is that there’s no speed control, and it's larger and heavier than other tools we tried,.hat makes it harder to control for fine detail work. It's got a lot of muscle and the included 1/4" collet lets you use die grinder tools with it, so. if your needs are in the trades and not the hobby shop, it’s worth a look.
Offered by Harbor Freight, a company known for their low-priced quality tools, the Chicago Electric variable speed rotary tool may not be as fully-featured as some of the competition, but it’s readily available in-store which makes it quite convenient.
Despite its 1.3 amp motor and 8 to 35,000 rpm speed range, the Chicago Electric variable speed rotary tool still didn't feel as powerful or as high-speed as other models during use. It did fine with lighter-duty tasks, but it struggled with more challenging tasks like cutting shapes out of plywood. Quality of the tool, case, and attachments all lag behind the leaders, but there are lots of favorable reviews from buyers who had their expectations met and were happy with the price they paid.
Available at most retail stores
Makita tools are popular, so we tried hard to include the brand in our testing. The GD061 is the closest we came up with, but it's much larger, heavier, and more rugged than anything else we tried. It's a true die grinder, the kind of tool that originally inspired the original Dremel and created the rotary tool category in the first place.
The Makita GD0601 was the largest and most impressively well-built tool we tried. It's also heavy and the 3.5 amp motor is more powerful than any others, aside from the Dewalt. The 1/4" collet (the sleeve and nut that secures attachments to the tool) is a signal that it's not suited for the delicate tasks that you might use smaller rotary tools for. On the other hand, it had no trouble with our hardest tests.
If you feel as if you'd be pushing one of the smaller choices to its limit, this heavy-duty Makita is worth considering. Its speed isn't variable, but the fixed 25,000 rpm no-load speed is within the capabilities of every tool here, and it has a lot of torque behind it to do the work.
Not suited for delicate tasks
We used the rotary tools to polish tarnished metal and de-burr the edges of a newly cut piece of sheet metal.
To find the full range of these rotary tools' power and ease of handling, we tested in two phases. First, we tried some close-up work like carving a design into a piece of wood and sanding down the edges of a plank. We also used the rotary tools to polish up some tarnished metal and de-burr (grinding smooth) the edges of a newly cut piece of sheet metal.
Afterward, we switched from the mandrels and polishing pads to a spiral cutting bit and traced and cut out an "E" from a 3/8" piece of birch plywood. The 3/8" thickness and different orientation of the layers was a tougher challenge than something lighter, like lauan plywood, which all of these tools would easily power through. A soft wood-like pine would also be a less difficult task, though the challenge there is to find the right speed for the tool so you don't scorch your work with an overheated bit.
For the second phase of our testing, we cut circles out of the same piece of birch plywood, etched designs into glass, and drilled into cinder blocks. With the right bits, some tests, such as drilling into cinder blocks, can be surprisingly easy. While you may have trouble getting through mortar or cement, something like old brick is softer than you'd think..
For continuous cutting, like our "E," your best bet is a corded model to avoid abusing batteries or running out of a charge before you finish the task. We found a surprising amount of similarity in design and performance among several of the tools, as well as some stand out showings from our winners.
A rotary tool spins at a high fixed or variable speed, and can be used for detailed work such as cutting, polishing, engraving, and even carving. You can use them with drill bits and there are even accessories available to turn rotary tools into a sort of miniature drill press. Since there are many accessories and bits, and swapping accessories and attachments is easy and quick, rotary tools are among some of the most handy tools to have in your tool kit.
Most rotary tools fit in the palm of your hand, and the latest cordless rotary tools are highly portable but usually end up being less powerful than corded versions. We expect that that will change as batteries and motors keep improving, and it’s worth noting that one of our top picks was a battery model with impressive performance.
Rotary tools have a lot of uses, from fine miniature details to speeding up a wallboard installation. That said, a rotary tool isn't the same thing as a rotary drill or rotary hammer, two terms you may come across while searching for one of these. Those are lower-speed, heavier-duty devices for different jobs including general carpentry,construction, masonry, and demolition.
The wide range of tools and attachments available to accessorize a rotary tool is enough to make your head spin. The possibilities for bits and attachments seem nearly endless, and it makes a rotary tool a very versatile purchase.
Grinding attachments in a variety of shapes—conical, spherical, round, etc.—are useful to sharpen things such as shears, lawn mower blades, or other metal shaping tasks. There are small wire brushes and soft polishing pads, too, for buffing and shining.
Small drill bits, often made out of very hard material such as carbide, are used for precise work in a variety of materials including metals, tough composites, and plastics. And stone and diamond grit tools that can cut and shape glass and some rock are available in a wide array of shapes and sizes.
Spiral, or "Rotozip" (after the tool that originally made them popular) bits are used for cutting. We used some during our wood cutting tests, and drywall installers keep them handy to quickly trim pieces around electrical boxes or other detailed cuts. There’s even a carbide bit for cleaning away grout during kitchen tile installations.
Attachments only further adapt a rotary tool's set of capabilities. Cutting guides that set a fixed depth can come in especially handy when cutting sheet materials. Guides make it easy to use the tool as a router, along the edge of a piece of material, or cut a perfect circle several inches in diameter. Flex shafts allow a user to hang the motor and have very precise control over the bit.
We've drawn attention to the speeds these tools are capable of throughout our review. That's because it's important for a rotary tool to be able to achieve both a very high rotational speed, but also have enough choices to run slower when necessary.
High speed is suited for things such as drilling, especially with very small bits, while the higher speed may generate too much heat when carving or sanding. The ability to dial up the speed when necessary makes for cleaner work, because the tool has the power to cut and shape properly.
For people who use these tools as pet nail trimmers, for instance, too high a speed can actually hurt an animal. Any polishing task should also start at the lowest speed setting and work up to something in the middle of the range.
The wider the range of speeds is, the better matched your rotary tool will be to the task at hand. It will be safer, too.
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Prices were accurate at the time this article was published but may change over time. The product experts at Reviewed have all your shopping needs covered. Follow Reviewed on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, or Flipboard for the latest deals, product reviews, and more.
Prices were accurate at the time this article was published but may change over time.
The product experts at Reviewed have all your shopping needs covered. Follow Reviewed on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, or Flipboard for the latest deals, product reviews, and more.
Dan Roth is an editor, writer, and automotive journalist.
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