i-Drill 12V Li-Ion Cordless Drills: Discontinued — What to Buy Instead

The i-Drill range was a set of 12V lithium-ion cordless drills sold when lithium packs were still new to budget tools. The brand is no longer visible in the market.

The thing that kills a cordless tool

Not the motor. Not the chuck. The battery, and specifically the platform.

A cordless tool is only as alive as the company still making packs that fit its foot. When a brand stops trading, the tool has a fixed remaining life measured by how long its existing cells hold charge — typically a few hundred cycles, or a few years of sitting on a shelf at partial charge, whichever comes first.

There is no fix. Pack rebuilding exists, but on a 12V budget drill the cost of cells and a spot welder exceeds what a working replacement drill costs.

Why that shapes what you buy next

Buy into a platform, not a tool. The two longest-lived consumer platforms are worth naming for exactly this reason:

Ryobi ONE+ has used the same 18V foot since 1996. A pack bought today fits a tool bought thirty years ago, and vice versa.

Makita LXT has been unchanged since 2005 and now spans well over two hundred tools.

That continuity is the single most valuable feature in a cordless range, and it is invisible on a spec sheet.

What 12V is good for

Do not read this as “12V was the mistake”. A modern 12V brushless drill is a genuinely better tool for cabinet work, electrical work and anything overhead — it is shorter nose to tail and far lighter in the wrist. The mistake was the orphan platform, not the voltage.

What to buy

The Ryobi 18V ONE+ HP brushless drill/driver kit, linked below, is the straightforward replacement: brushless, on the platform with the longest compatibility record in the business, and cheap enough that the batteries are the investment rather than the tool.

If most of your work is small fasteners and cabinet hardware, look at a 12V brushless kit from a manufacturer still trading, and accept that you are buying into that brand’s foot.