It looks like a futuristic pistol and has a vague 007 air about it. If it wasn’t quite so chunky, and moss green, you could imagine Mr Bond pulling it from his dinner jacket. This is what I decided after unpacking the Bosch IXO Cordless Screwdriver. The cake tin-style packaging was adorned with women fixing their dining room chairs or kitchen drawers, but I refused to let this dent my 007 credentials. However, despite my attempts to butch-up the IXO, I couldn’t escape the fact that it was really quite “cute”. The screwdriver comes with ten different heads and a charger (it takes five hours to charge fully).
To test the IXO I set about building a new coffee table. It was a typical flat-pack with a number of Ikea-inspired joins in awkward-to-reach places. The dainty IXO was small enough to fit into the corners, and its handgun shape and trigger-style power button made it easy to use. There were also a few neat features that I was not expecting: a tiny light at the screw end lights up the area in front whenever you squeeze the trigger, and a bar under the barrel lets you switch between driving in and loosening screws.
The flat-pack table was up in record time, but I wasn’t ready to stop there, so up went a new laundry basket that I had left in its box under my bed for months. Again, a 20-minute job was cut down to two. The screwdriver’s 3.7 volts made light work of it all. I was beginning to enjoy myself, but sadly ran out of jobs.
The IXO isn’t going to be an essential piece of kit for guys built of stronger stuff. But for DIY newcomers, Ikea regulars and even the odd would-be secret agent, the IXO speeds through jobs that would otherwise raise a sweat.
HERO’S VERDICT: ****
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The Bosch IXO Cordless Screwdriver costs £34.99. www.boschpowertools.co.uk