Good afternoon, all this is the ryobi r18 hg heat gun 18 volt powered by a battery. Now i use this primarily for off-grid heat shrinking and it's very good. It was about 75 pounds or thereabouts and that's without the battery - and this is the parkside uh ph lga 20-li a1. Also, a cordless heat gun um again comes without a battery, but you can buy the battery for it.

This one's a 4 amp power. Now this was only 15 pounds and, of course, the batteries are so much cheaper as well in the parkside range. So if you include the heat gun and the battery, this is probably about five or six times cheaper. So is it any good? Does it compare with the ryobi? Well, let's find out i'm going to do some heat shrinking now.

The ryobi uh comes with two attachment nozzles. I use this sort of reflecting uh folded back nozzle for heat shrinking and it's just sort of. We have to release that security catch, but it's just press and go there's only one setting on the ryobi. The park side comes with three nozzles in total.

It also comes with this sort of handle and a triangular scraper thing for scraping wallpaper. I presume, but interestingly, this one has got three heat settings high, medium and cold. Why you'd want cold with such a puny? Blower, i don't know. The only thing i can think of is that you run it for 10 seconds after you've used it to cool it down.

Now, if you run the ryobi and that's got four bars on the battery, run it and then look at the battery, that's showing three bars. It's obviously putting a fair bit of current. Let's do the same on the park side. So on this one, we've got three bars on there.

Let's run it, that's still saying three bars but of course that's on the half heat, let's put it on the high heat and that's showing only one bar, of course, if you put it on cold, the pitch goes up and there's no load or very little on The battery anyway, i'm going to do a very unscientific test. I'm going to make up some of these black and red cables you can see. I use them to link the junction boxes for my workshop lighting, so i'm just going to make up some of these cables in various different lengths and for that i'm going to use these terminal. These are crimp ones, but i take the crimp piece off first and then i'll use some heat shrink sleeving once i've soldered that on so let's get started so i'll start with a 18 inch length.

That's 18 inches on my inch. Spaced led flashing, light measuring board. So, let's tin, these two wire ends that are one that's the negative and that one that's the positive and now oh, i must put the heat shrink on these before i solder them onto the terminals. Okay, soldering, the negative one on that's good and soldering.

The positive one on like that: okay, ready to slip the heat shrink on and start off-grid heat shrinking, okay, so first the ryobi, which i know and it works fine, that's the negative! Now, let's do the positive and uh yeah that makes a nice job of heat. Shrinking that end i'll solder, the terminals onto the other end and then i'll use the park side. Okay, now the park side, which i've actually never used, i'm going to use it on the half heat setting. Let's try that oh yeah, that is going it's possibly a little bit.

Let's move that out, possibly a little bit slower than the oh, it's very hot! Actually, yeah! That's getting well hot! Just give it a bit more on that, because i think it took a bit of time to warm up, but that's when it's half heat and uh yeah. That's done a very excellent job for about a fifth of the price. So you can't complain. I might try using the high heat now and now using the parkside lidl uh heat gun on the high heat setting yeah that's on the high heat setting.

Oh that's really fast. Actually, yeah! That's that's really quick. I would say that this thing on its high heat setting is hotter and faster than the ryobi, and this thing on its low heat setting is actually a bit slower and less powerful than the ryobi. Now, if you want to keep your batteries uh in good condition, it probably is best not to pull so much current that this thing shows that it's virtually empty.

So i think i'd probably operate this on the low heat setting um. I still have the other end of this to do so. Let's just do that now, of course, this thing is already warm, so it'll be a bit quicker this time, oh yeah, it is quicker. So, yes, if you're doing lots of these one after the other, the low heat setting is absolutely fine.

If you're just doing a one-off and you're in a bit of a hurry, then i guess the high heat setting. I don't want to melt all the plastic there. Um might be better, but that's perfectly acceptable and for i don't know, a quarter, a fifth or even a sixth, if you include include the cost of the battery of the price of the ryobi. Well, it's a no-brainer, isn't it so there we are.

I made up my two of my um terminal cables, one eighteen inch, one seventeen inch just because i might need them um and using the ryobi 75 pounds, i think, plus about 75 for the battery so 150 pounds for that and this 15 pounds for the uh Heat gun and 25, i think for the 4 amp hour battery so 40 quid for that. So yes about a quarter of the price, and it's just as good. It has more nozzles and it has two heat settings so uh. You can make your own mind up about that.

Cheerio.