Just for general DIY – drilling into walls to hand shelves etc, nothing heavy duty. Thinking no more than £50 absolute max.

Doesn't have to be too clever (the more features the more goes wrong, I have just discovered!) I'm assuming cordless at this price is not worth the bother?

Nah, spend a bit more, unless you get something good on sale.

For walls, you'll need a hammer-action drill, with a fair bit of power. Don't bother with cordless; little more than electric screwdrivers at this price level.

How much is a "fair bit" of power then?

A £50 drill will become landfill. Double your budget and you will aquire something worthwhile.

Makita make top sellers.

My Atlas Copco cost me £12 a year (£200 17 years ago and heavily used). The 12V NiCd smart charger has enabled the batteries to last all this time – astonishing! Blows the LiIon and NiMh technology out of the water on longevity grounds. What do you get out of those with careful management? 3 years?

Cheap power tools = landfill. They will let you down, no matter how infrequently you use them.

my makita cost less than 50 quid brand new, admittedly in a sale. plenty powerful. mains.
you're correct though – cheap cordless tools are bobbins, and good ones aren't worth the expenditure unless you use them professionally and drill a lot of holes.

fwiw, i bought a 30 quid discount brand a year ago for occasional use and it's still working OK after drilling into concrete walls a fair amount. if you've got a big project coming up, then buy a name.

battery will be crap if you're going cheap, though.

Buy a Bosch with a proper chuck and a chuck key.

B&Q and ScrewFix have some good deals on Makita and DeWalt 18V cordless ones now. I'd be in the market for one of those at about £100 if I had not just complemented my 240V Bosch hammer drill with a (240V) Bosch SDS+

If you won't be drilling a lot then go for a 240V corded drill with hammer action. It'll be cheaper and more reliable than a discount cordless for sure. And go for an OK brand at least.

I'm about to give a 14.4V B&Q discount brand cordless drill away as it is dreadful.

If your just putting up shelves then I can't see that you need to spend £100. Just make sure its an SDS hammer type.

I have a 9 year old Bosch 240v SDS that I regularly borrow from work…I've still not managed to kill it…

I renovated my whole house so it got a year of almost constant use with SDS drill bits up to 28mm, and I used it to core drill 65mm holes through very hard 9" brick, with a borrowed (blunted) core drill set. It got so hot the grease was melting and running out of the chuck. It hasn't got a safety clutch so when it sticks, its the gearbox that takes a hammering.

Still passes its yearly safety check 🙂

Metabo… Made in Germany and 3 year warranty and start around £60-70 quid.
Metabo Deals

SDS+ makes standard hammer drills look like a joke, and I'd never buy another hammer drill having used them.

If you really do want to go cheap, the Ryobi One series of 18v+ rechargeables are good but a bit above £50, but the batteries are big enough to be used for a range of other stuff like sanders, strimmers, hedge trimmers etc etc. I don't think you really need SDS for occasional stuff unless you live in a concrete walled building or are drilling big holes.

I also like Makita stuff – but for something to get through walls that will be well above your price point. You do need something with a hammer action and cordless is hugely easier, but you need a decent powered drill, don't go for 12V or below.

If you are only going to buy one drill then a reasonable brand, corded drill with hammer action is all you need. Theres a limit to the number of shelves anyone can put up in the one house. SDS drills are ace compared to a regular hammer action drill when it comes to drilling into tough walls, but useless for anything else, and you'll not find drill bits for them in the local corner shop. To be honest, with a decent quality masonary bit like those light blue coloured ones that bosch do I do most of my masonary drilling with a non-hammer cordless. Hate the sound of the hammer action, so I only use it if the job actually calls of it, and 90% of the time it doesn't. Its only in non-domestic buildings, drill into solid, rough concrete, drilling for sleeve anchors etc that my SDS drill ever gets taken out of its box.

If you can get a mains drill with variable speed – look for a dial on the trigger – then its versatile enough to do many of the jobs a cordless drill can do – drive screws etc. Not quite as elegantly,they aren't as well balanced as cordless drills so its a bit fatiguing, but it'll do it, and you are spending the money on the drill rather than the batteries.

Check out the clearance section at screwfix. The 'site' range is made by makita and is seriously good value for money

Makita,
avoid Dewalt,i have 3 broken ones,
Screwfix are quitegood, and good guarantee,
Ryobi, cheap looking and not manly,

Take a look on the Screw Fix web site plenty of deals on there.

TBH think people are getting a bit overexcited here, I've got a really nice cordless Makita and a smaller cordless Bosch which I use as a big screwdriver, and they're both great but I've also got a corded hammer drill which I got from Sainsburys for £10 (not sure of the brand, it's blue 😉 ) and it's perfect for this sort of thing. No it won't last as long, but it doesn't matter since it'll never get used much anyway.

You have got a point. The average drill is supposedly used for 12 minutes before it's chucked.

I'd still buy an SDS+, but then I've got a cheap cordless drill for banging screws in / drilling metal and wood, and a pillar drill for anything more heavy duty 😆