192
people found this helpful, as of 2023
ranked #172,858 most helpful
out of 571,544,897 reviews
★★★★☆
Great boxes with a couple of nit picks
After reading a ton of reviews and watching the destruction test on Youtube, I just bought several of these boxes (2 small, 2 Large, and one XL. They are great boxes, well built, stackable, lockable, etc., but DeWalt's designers had the opportunity to make a truly great system with tons of plug-n-play parts that tied into and played well with other DeWalt products, but the designers didn't have their coffee or the different design teams didn't talk to each other. So I have a few bones to pick.
1) After seeing what someone did with a small case for an angle grinder, I thought I would take his idea and tweak it a bit for my use. While working on it I discovered that the lid wouldn't close with the accessory tray installed. "Well, I'll just take it off the small box lid and install it on a large or XL lid." But my nefarious plan was foiled as the small cases have screw points molded into the structural foam for attaching the accessory tray. The large and XL lids do not. Surely I am not the only person who has wanted to do this?
2) Now I might be being a bit anal retentive here.... The accessory tray is a neat idea. But the left hand side one is one huge bin, the left hand side has several narrower slots. You would think that you would be able to take the little rubber inserts from DeWalt's screwdriver bit hard case and insert them in the accessory lid -- and thus not have to carry around several hard cases or having you drill bits and drivers rattling around in the case... Again, my hopes and dreams were shattered as not only to they not fit, there is nowhere to attach them.
3) The final insult is that the small case comes with 8 bins (2 large and 6 small) they fit really well in the small case. But if you are putting tools in a small case, then you have these yellow bins sitting on your tool bench looking all sad and needing a place to go and things to be put in them! So again I thought, "I'll put them at the bottom of the large case!" But I was denied. Due to the structural ribs inside the larger cases, the bins do not fit like they do in the small box. You can't fit all 8 of the bins in the larger cases (2 of the small bins must be omitted) leaving a 3-3/8" gap from side to side and a 3/4" gap from front to back.
Man were the designers at DeWalt asleep at the drafting table here. They came up with pretty darn good cases (tough and weather resistant) but I think they missed an opportunity to have a truly great system without much extra cost by simply re-purposing some of their existing pieces-parts...
Bottom line. Great product easily worthy of 4 stars. With a few tweaks to make it truly modular it would be 5 stars.
October 2013 · Tools and Home Improvement · verified purchase