Metabo

Sep 19, 2023

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This cordless nailer provides maximum productivity and neatness.

The Takeaway: One of the lightest and easiest handling nail guns we’ve used is this tool from Metabo-HPT. Its predecessor was already nimble, and this is 31 percent lighter than that. For all its light weight and slimness, you can be confident in its nail-driving power; it successfully sank nails in both hard and softwood.

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During our tests using the NT1850DF to fasten hardwood and softwood, we find that it's emblematic of today's cordless power tool in several important respects. It's easy handling, powerful, and productive. That last point is key, both for homeowners who struggle to get the job done on a Saturday or an evening and for professionals who regularly need to drive a lot of nails. Cordless tools provide mobility and speed because, among other things, you can hold the work with one hand and drill, saw, sand, or nail with the other. That one-handed capability plus the means to consistently repeat those functions is what has driven the soaring productivity in residential construction over the past 20 years.

This brings us to installing trim. In sequence, it looks something like this: Measure or mark the trim directly, cut, and fasten. Each one of those steps needs to happen quickly, accurately and consistently. Get one of them wrong and the trim will not go up neatly, which defeats its purpose. After all, trim is the finishing touch that conceals gaps around windows, doors, and at the floor. And by acting as an embellishment, it helps beautify the space.

Here's where this nailer comes in. You’ve got everything else right (the trim is marked, cut, and fits neatly with the adjoining piece). Now hold the trim in position with one hand, place the finish nailer where you need it, and pull its trigger. Boom. You get a crisply fired 18-gauge nail fastening the trim. And most importantly, the head of the nail is countersunk such that it requires hardly any filler to conceal. Repeat on the next nail, and so on. Not only have you just installed some neat trim, but the cleanup work—filling the nail holes and applying paint—will go that much faster. For trim that you want to give a clear finish, the difference is even more profound. A tiny dab of color-matched putty in the nail hole is all you need.

All this happens so fast, neatly, and quietly, it's hard to overstate just how much of an improvement this tool makes in the speed and neatness of the work. Compare that to nailing by hand, where the hand you use to place the nail in position is also the one you press down on the trim with to hold it in place. Then you make a couple of blows on the nail head so that it stays in position, then reposition your hand to hold the trim. Finish driving the nail and hope that you don't make a misplaced hammer blow that will mar your work. When the nail is nearly fully driven, take your nail set, hold it on the nail head and countersink the fastener. See the difference? All it will take is a couple of shots with NT1850DF to make you a believer.

Metabo-HPT rates the nailer as being able to fire 1,650 nails per charge (it doesn't specify the nail length, the material into which you’re firing, or the substrate). We can't verify that marathon nailing figure, but we reliably fired hundreds of 2-inch nails into white pine, radiata pine, and red oak. We found that the tool is reliable in that, with rare exceptions, it drove each nail to its full depth with a neatly set head. We add here that each of those materials were fastened to Douglas fir, a common but tough framing material.

We were particularly taken with the tool's light weight (slightly more than 5 pounds with its 3-amp-hour battery), its balance, and the geometry that helps you see right where you put its tip. Accurate placement of the nailer's tip is important, obviously, since the more ornate the trim, the more precisely you need to place the nailer to avoid damaging the trim.

The tool uses a drive system consisting of a brushless motor and an assembly of a compressed air cylinder and spring. Thus, there's essentially no cycle time between shots—much like a compressed air nailer, but without the hose dragging along behind you. Metabo-HPT rates the tool's driving speed at three nails per second. Now, that likely doesn't account for repositioning the gun accurately between nails, but we can say that it fires as fast as you’re going to need. Its magazine holds 100 nails, from 5⁄8 to 2 inches long. And given its fast-firing capability, you can go through its magazine capacity in no time.

We also like its LED light, a particular help when installing baseboard trim in closets or for crown molding in a poorly lighted room. The side lock safety is also helpful because you can move about fastening trim so quickly, it's easy to lose sight of the fact that the tool is loaded and ready to fire when its nose is depressed against a surface, whether that's when the tool is set down on the floor or inside a tool box.

And as they say, safety first. We’re all for speed, consistency, and neatness of the finished product. But without working safely, you’ll defeat the purpose of it all.

Roy Berendsohn has worked for more than 25 years at Popular Mechanics, where he has written on carpentry, masonry, painting, plumbing, electrical, woodworking, blacksmithing, welding, lawn care, chainsaw use, and outdoor power equipment. When he's not working on his own house, he volunteers with Sovereign Grace Church doing home repair for families in rural, suburban and urban locations throughout central and southern New Jersey.

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