Review: Ridgid 18V Cordless Extended 3/8 Inch Ratchet

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I’m quickly approaching half-century vintage. An unthinkable age for 20-year-old me who spent 30 hours a week working in a car factory, found 12 hours a week for sports, went to school, and spent countless hours working on and racing my own car. I was never too sore to do any of this. Now, most of my days are spent with reading glasses perched studiously on my nose, wrangling words behind a laptop. There are times when a few too many words typed, a bit too much knife work preparing dinner, and a couple of Lego projects with my son have me reaching for the ibuprofen. When it’s time to work on the car, or any project with metal fasteners, I am reaching for power tools like this Ridgid 18V Brushless Extended Reach Ratchet to help bring back some of the efficiency of youth.

This Ridgid ratchet isn’t being reviewed in a vacuum, or with a vacuum for that matter. I have been testing cordless ratchets over a several-week time period trying to get a feel for the differences, not only between individual ratchets, but also to look at a more macro view as a part of a brand’s collection. I’m also going into the micro a bit more to see if a ratchet warrants a spot on the shelf, either alongside or instead of other tools which are different flavors of handheld fastener spinners.

I received a total of six cordless ratchets for testing. Put side-by-side there are some noticeable differences between them. This Extended Reach model is the longes. The naming convention is pretty on the nose, although creative naming of products that look like this could go south pretty fast. Ahem. So this ratchet is 19.5 inches in length, the standard version Ridgid is 16 inches. All of the additional length is found in the head extension.

Besides the reach, it also adds roughly half a pound in weight with the longer version right at 3.0 pounds and the regular version at 2.5 pounds. If you’re curious, the DeWalt standard version is 16 inches long and weighs 2.7 pounds. A Ryobi is 13.5 inches long, but it’s a little apples and oranges with a different battery orientation.

Spoiler alert: