They make good tools, sure, but most of the time they're simply not worth the fairly insane price they ask. When I was a tech I had some snap on shit, but there' just no way you can justify the price of most of their shit with the benefit you get out of them.
Example. I got a 3/4 drive socket set from harbor freight for $30. A snap on set would have been $550. I could break 10 sets of the hf junk, and still not justify the snap on price.
the HF set held up to about 5 years of professional use too behind a 600 ft/lb gun, and I still use them at home, never had a problem.
Is the snap on set, better quality and stronger and all that? Sure....does it work any better, in practice, than the HF set? No. So naturally, it isn't worth almost 20x the price to me.
Some things they make are worth it, like my gear puller set was like $500 but it's the only gear puller I ever owned that didn't fall apart after three or four uses. But you always got to seriously study if the price is worth it before you buy from them, 90% of the time it isn't.
Michael King
Part of the price of snap-on tools is quality control. HF tools have poor/non-existent QC, to the point that while you're socket set held up fine I could go buy the same thing right now and the sockets could shatter the first time I stick them on an impact. Further more HF "impact" sockets are actually just CR-V steel which is basically as bad as using chrome coated sockets on an impact gun. That said I don't by snap-on, I prefer "industrial" brands like PROTO. Sunnex has been good too.
William Lopez
Harbor Freight has pretty much the same warranty except they're not cunts about honoring it.
Jayden Evans
>want to buy 2 2 inch drawers to replace my 4 inch top drawer >somehow the drawers are going to cost more than the entire box
Josiah Hill
The price isn't that ridiculous if you're a professional mechanic using them every day to make a living. HF tools don't handle those type of conditions and abuse too well.
Snap on is overkill for the average home mechanic.
Leo Murphy
Heres the thing. If you use your tools for commercial use, ie working in a shop fucking go ahead and buy the snap on stuff. You might get two to three uses out of harbor freight shit at the maximum. I bought a fucking bubble flare tool for brake lines once from harbor freight, the thing literally disintegrated in my vice when I was tightening the ears on it. Harbor freight is straight garbage.
Jace Cox
I've known a few people, besides myself, who used HF tools professionally, none of them had problems.
It's pretty rare that you break any tool on the job, losing tools is always the big concern, and no warrenty covers a lost tool.
That's another problem I have with snap on, their warranty is great in theory, but it all comes down to how willing your local snap on guy is about warrantying shit. Mine would do it, but he'd act like a total dick and try to passive aggressively talk you out of doing it all the time, blaming you for breaking the thing. You'd get your tool replaced if you could stand putting up with his shit for half an hour. I eventually just started going to a snap on guy from a neighboring town to get my shit replaced, and he had no problem with it.
Jason Anderson
>He actually bought a $40,000 toolbox
Eli Scott
Some of their specialty tools are shit because they're literally only designed to be used once. All of their regular hand tools (with just a few notable exceptions) will last halfway to forever as long as you don't pry on your screwdrivers and hammer on your sockets.
Kevin Green
>The price isn't that ridiculous if you're a professional mechanic using them every day to make a living
Uh...yeah it is. You know how much techs make? It's not a lot.
>HF tools don't handle those type of conditions and abuse too well.
Some do, some don't. Their sockets do.
>You might get two to three uses out of harbor freight shit at the maximum.
I've gotten years of professional and personal use out of my hf sockets.
>I bought a fucking bubble flare tool for brake lines once from harbor freight
Funny thing about flare tools, is most people don't actually know how to use them, and end up destroying them. I had someone destroy my snap on flare set because he didn't read the directions or listen to me.
>Harbor freight is straight garbage
Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't.
Like snap on is worth it sometimes, a lot of times it isn't. Sure, they're tools are great, but are they worth the cost? Not usually.
Most techs you'll see who got the snap on box, and full tool set are 10s of thousands of dollars in debt, and if they ever loose their job, all that shit is getting repo'd.
My tools were never the greatest, but they got the job done, and I actually owned all mine.
