Ryobi tools are massively popular, and their price point certainly makes them tempting. But is Ryobi a good brand? Are Ryobi tools any good? We’ve been reviewing Ryobi products for well over a decade. We’re diving deep into that experience to help you answer those questions and decide if Ryobi is a brand you should buy.
Is Ryobi a Good Brand?
Let’s start with some basics. Ryobi is tool brand under the TTI (Techtronic Industries) umbrella. Other names you might recognize that are part of the same parent company include Milwaukee, Ridgid, HART, and Hoover. TTI is publicly traded on the Hong Kong stock exchange (symbol TTNY).
A Home Depot exclusive brand, Ryobi originally served DIYers with their product offerings, with Ridgid covering value-focused Pros and Milwaukee filling the premium professional category. More recent product developments continue to meet the needs of DIYers and homeowners. However, Ryobi’s higher-end products are attracting more serious DIYers and entry-level Pros; a class known as Prosumer.
With products that include electric, cordless, and gas power sources, Ryobi covers a wide range of tools, outdoor power equipment, and lifestyle products. On its popular 18V One+ battery system, there are currently more than 280 products that all work on the same batteries.
There’s also a 40V system that pushes performance higher, primarily focusing on outdoor power equipment and a handful of lifestyle products.
A relatively new 80V system moved Ryobi into the battery-powered lawn mower space, including several zero-turn mowers and lawn tractors.
Another recent system is the USB Lithium line that covers smaller products such as flashlights, ratchets, and rotary tools. It’s a wide-ranging system that has some genuinely useful products you might not have thought about.
Most of Ryobi’s gas products are pressure washers, string trimmers, and leaf blowers. Similarly, Ryobi’s electric focus is primarily on lawn care along with a few hybrid cordless/AC tools.
Moving away from powered products, Ryobi has a handful of hand tools and an innovative Link storage system.
So, is Ryobi a good brand? It’s certainly wide-ranging and has shown adaptability and versatility in a constantly changing landscape. In our opinion, Ryobi has done, and continues to do, an outstanding job of meeting the needs of its user base.
Are Ryobi Tools Any Good?
Moving from the 30,000-foot view of whether Ryobi is a good brand to focus on whether the individual tools are any good, we can complete the picture.
As a broad Prosumer brand, one thing to keep in mind is that Ryobi has products that meet the needs of basic DIYers all the way through ones that can help price-conscious Pros make a living. When you’re shopping for Ryobi tools, it’s important to know what end of the scale you’re buying and what your expectations are.
When you look at the less expensive side of things, you’re trading off some features and performance to get that lower price point. These tools work just fine for basic projects and repairs, but you’ll notice the difference between them and the mid or high-end tools.
As you move into the middle of the range, the designs begin to improve in performance, add features, and become more refined in their physical designs. Moving up to the high-end where we see 18V One+ HP Brushless and 40V HP Brushless tools, you get the best of everything Ryobi has to offer.
No matter what end of the scale you’re considering, Ryobi does not compromise safety to hit a price point. We’ve been inside the labs and design facilities in Ryobi’s Anderson, SC headquarters, and it’s clear when you talk to the people behind the tools that safety is the number one priority in every design.
So, are Ryobi tools any good? Each tool the team produces is specifically designed for a certain type of user, and those tools are all conceived with safety in mind. In our opinion, Ryobi makes excellent tools. If you use them for the applications they’re designed to work in, you should expect to get years of service from them.
