Bosch Home and Garden Rotary Hammer PBH 2100 RE (550 W, in case)

You move into your new house. It is the house of your dreams, at least it will be one day.
The strange stains left on the carpets from the previous owner really do make you wonder how bad their alzheimer’s really was. You rip out the carpets and get new ones put back in their place, apart from the bathrooms of course! Yes, people still live with carpets in their bathrooms! The carpet really matched the light pink bathroom suite and the floral tiles. It wont be long until the day the rest of the bathroom is ripped out too.

Demo day, or demo weeks for the common DIYer, can be a great deal of fun. Taking tiles off the wall is a hammer and chisel job. Taking the sand and cement off the wall underneath when you eventually find out some of it has blown is a rotary hammer drill job. This post talks about one of the cheaper rotary hammer drills on the market. A drill that can often times found at a discount.

Overview

Bosch’s DIYers range is the called “Home and Garden”. These tools are made to be cheaper for those of us that are hobbyists but without missing out on functionality. The Bosch Home and Garden Rotary Hammer PBH 2100 RE (550 W, in case) made my life so much easier and I wish I had purchased it sooner!

Date purchased	July 2022
Price paid	£69.99
Repeat My Shop rating	8/10

Pros

A great tool to have in the arsenal when you need a little more power.

Makes light work of tasks such as removing render from blockwork (using the hammer action mode), mixing tile mortar and drilling into masonry is much easier when compared to a standard drill driver.

Good price for a rotary hammer drill, especially when you don’t plan to use it all that often.

SDS-Plus bits are quite common and inexpensive.

Cons

There is no safety catch/button so you should be careful when picking up and lowering the drill. The button on the handle is to keep the power on permanently, a feature that could also be quite unsafe.

When using the hammer action, sometimes, the drill did not seem to engage correctly at full power. Trying regulate the speed through the trigger to around half power seemed to help.

You will not be able to use your drill driver bits in this drill driver. It takes SDS-plus and therefore you will need to buy a new set of bits. However, you can get SDS-plus chucks to enable you to use your normal bits, should this be an attractive idea.

If you are hoping for a cordless tool, you will be disappointed. Cordless drills will be more expensive, especially when also including the price of the battery.