Working with your hands can be therapeutic and give you the opportunity to ponder life’s big questions as you're loosening fasteners. That is up until the point you remember that it’s the hottest, most humid day of the year and you’ve only just started to rotate your tires.

Adding a cordless impact wrench to your collection may change your life. You'll spend less time fussing over stubborn bolts and more time actually enjoying the work or your car. Even if you’ll only ever use one for freeing wheels and tires, it’s still worth adding to your collection because of the dramatic impact it’ll have on your working experience.

And there’s no shortage of options for new cordless impacts, either. Nor is it hard to track down the latest and greatest model with all the bells and whistles. Is that really what you need for your project, though? Obviously, there is such a thing as overkill, but you also don’t want to go cheap and wind up with a fancy paperweight. That’s what we’re here for as our goal is to highlight some of our favorite impacts on the market so that you can decide what’s best for your home garage.

I'm all for doing things the hard way. Taking the long way around is a great way to grow closer to your car and do more of what you love doing most. However, some jobs just suck. An impact wrench is usually the best way to blast through them. Something as painstaking as breaking the lugs and lifting the vehicle so you can finish removing the wheel becomes as trivial as pulling a trigger. Using impacts is also a good way to rival the efficiency of the competitors if you're into doing this sort of thing for a living. There are a ton of options out there, and it can be tough to decide which is worth your while if you're new to this side of the industry. I'm here to help.