God Bless Competition

Life is very exciting these days, because it looks like ordinary mortals will finally be able to get their hands on a Fein Multimaster…CLONE. I mentioned this earlier today.

The Multimaster is one of those tools you feel you absolutely have to have, once you see the cool commercial. It’s even more impressive than the Flavor Injector and Mighty Putty, and that’s saying something. All it does is vibrate a blade or a sanding tip back and forth, but somehow, you can do a lot of impressive crap with it anyway.

I love watching the videos. The people at Fein seem obsessed with two things: removing putty from windows, and cutting the bottoms of door jambs so tile will fit under them. It sounds boring, but I could watch them do that all day.

Have I ever needed to do either of those things?

No.

Still.

Up until now, the Fein Multimaster has sold for the ridiculous price of like $200 for the tool and a couple of crappy attachments, which is like paying $200 for an electric toothbrush. So a lot of people have refused to buy Multimasters. I think the price is high because there’s a patent issue; nobody was allowed to clone it in the US. Maybe I’m wrong. Anyway, in a couple of days, you’ll be able to buy one of two knockoffs: the Bosch PS50 Multi-x and the Dremel Multimax. Actually, I think the Dremel is already available.

Boy, they worked hard coming up with original names for these things.

The Dremel has a cord and costs around a hundred bucks. It’s a 1.5-amp tool. The Bosch is cordless. I have no idea what the wattage is on either tool. The Bosch, plus the basic junk, is like $130. So it’s like 65% of the price of the Fein. I know, I know…the Fein is made by genetically engineered Swiss elves who used to work for BMW (HEIL!), so it’s an Ubertool. I’m sure the Bosch will work okay anyway.

I’m not a huge fan of cordless tools, but for something like this, I guess it makes sense. It’s not like you’re going to be running it for an hour at a time.

Here’s what would be really good. It would be really good if Fein dropped its price. I guess that will happen in about a month.

I make fun of these things, but I’ll tell you what’s cool about them. You can take a flat piece of wood and cut rectangular holes in it. I don’t have any other tools that do that. It’s a real pain.