Pros:
+ power to do almost all real-world tasks
+ quality is high
+ circular saw is best cordless ever
+ battery life is good and meter is useful even for contractors
+ bag is *much* better than one of those formed cases
Cons:
- pricey compared to 18-volt
- cold performance is poor, especially disappointing due to marketing claims
- easy to switch drill to hammer mode when adjusting clutch
- drill is great, but heavy
I've been using this tool set for more than a year now in a residential construction job. Though I am an HVAC contractor, I do lots of wood carpentry as part of the job. I bought the V28 set primarily after searching for the best cordless circular saw. Well, this is it. I haven't plugged in a circular saw since I've had the V28! I use all of these tools on a daily basis and they do everything I ask them to do. There's only one job where I even notice that I have a cordless tool in my hands: ripping treated or other hard lumber. Ripping is a hard job and I've melted the bearings/bushings our of corded saws while doing it. The V28 never gives the impression that the saw is being harmed, but it does bog down when ripping difficult woods. In such situations, a corded saw would be more powerful, but I like the V28 saw so much I don't bother with cords. I've yet to find anything that the drill or sawzall won't do. From hole saws to ship augers, the drill just goes through anything until the battery dies. You pay for this power in weight, though, as this is the heaviest cordless drill I've used.
I've found one Achilles heel with my V28 tools and it's cold-weather performance. I leave my tools on my van as it's inconvenient to take them home with me , so they sit out all night in the cold weather. When the batteries are stored below freezing, you will notice the difference come morning. The tools just won't have much power at all until the batteries warm up. Milwaukee claims that you can simply use the batteries for a few minutes and they will "warm themselves up" and operate normally, but any battery will warm up during use, so this is not a novel feature. What happens with the V28 batteries is that they will indeed warm up if you use them enough, but by the time by the time they are warm enough, they will be out of juice. This is rather confusing, because I know that lithium-ion batteries generally work better in the cold than NiMH. I've had lots of experience with NiMH cordless tools, though, and am convinced that the V28's are noticeably worse in the cold than my old NiMH tools, which were much, much cheaper. I am willing to put up with this poor cold performance in light of how good the tools are in every other respect, but I don't care for Milwaukee's marketing claims that their lithium-ion batteries offer cold-weather performance superior to the standard NiCd/NiMH types. I beg to differ. My V28 batteries spend a *lot* of time in the charger during the winter. An electrician that I work with liked my V28 tools and bought his own set and he has independently experienced the same cold-weather disappointments that I have.
In short, these tools are good enough to satisfy almost any contractor-grade user out there. They only leave you grumbling during the winter, though I typically manage to avoid the extension cord even then. Corded tools are still much cheaper and should provide a longer life than even the best cordless tools, but the convenience is worth it for me considering the way I use power tools. If you do framing or other major carpentry in one place, you'll prefer to run a cord and use cheaper, more powerful, corded tools. If you move around the job a lot and do many smaller, but still demanding jobs, you will probably be quite happy with the Milwaukee V28. Unless you only need one specialized tool, I highly recommend this 4-tool set, since the individual tool/battery combos are outrageously priced. With the V28, you are mostly paying for the batteries, so you might as well get the tools all together.
*** UPDATE May 5, 2010 ***
The batteries in my V28 system suffered a very poor lifespan when compared with Milwaukee's warranty coverage. My batteries each show about 800 charges at the time of this writing. Though they are covered by a 5-year warranty (2-year full replacement, next 3 years prorated), I noted serious drops in performance after only one year. After another year of use and further degradation (2008), I had the batteries tested by my local Milwaukee repair center. All cells checked out at normal voltage (4V), so they could not help me as they only measure unloaded voltage in order to detect dead or shorted cells. Long-term observation shows that overall capacity and voltage under load are definitely reduced in these batteries, however. When new, I could do hard work with these tools for hours before needing to recharge, but by the second year I was leaving one battery on the charger much of the time. The power available also suffered noticeably, so that I can no longer rip regular 2-by pine in reasonable fashion. Ripping untreated pine was easy when the batteries were new. The drill now binds up with large bits where before it would twist itself free of both your hands before binding.
My tools are still in fair shape, though the drill and circular saw both make minor whining noises implying that bearings might be wearing out. These noises go away once the tools are heated up to operating temperatures. I still believe that the tools are built well and that this is the best cordless circular saw I've used.
Cold weather performance grew even worse as these batteries degraded. At the 4-year mark, they are too cold to do even minor work after being exposed to 55-degree air for a few minutes (in the back of a pickup, for example). In my experience, V28 batteries only work when they are warmer than room temperature. Milwaukee obviously feels the batteries will last a long time, since they offer a 5-year warranty on them, but the two batteries in my kit have been charged and used equally and have degraded to equal degrees. I must assume that my experience is fairly typical, but perhaps both batteries suffer from the same manufacturing defect.
I am now considering the purchase of replacement batteries, but they are quite expensive and I'm concerned that the new ones will degrade just as rapidly as the first set. Since I know what to expect this time around, I would be more likely to ask for warranty replacement despite the test results. When you use your tools daily, it is difficult to ship the batteries to Milwaukee, especially when you have serious doubts that they will consider them worthy of replacement when the idle voltages report just fine. Do not consider this addendum to be critical of Milwaukee's customer service, since I did not actually call the company itself. My local repair shop simply implied that my batteries were fine and that Milwaukee would probably agree with that assessment.
It is not surprising that performance has degraded after 4 years of ownership as even the best rechargeable batteries have a finite lifetime. It was surprising just how rapidly these V28 batteries degraded right from the beginning, however. I have never owned another set of cordless tool batteries that suffered so badly from cool temperatures, either. At work I quickly developed a habit of sitting them in front of a heater or in the sun just to keep them warm, even when it was more than 50F.