The Husky is the ratchet to buy under $30. At $29 it turned in the most
efficient working arc swing of the whole group — 17.6 right-to-left passes to
rotate a socket 360 degrees inside a 30 degree space — on the strength of a
144-tooth gear set no other brand here comes close to. It backed that up with
165 g of back drag, 170 g on the directional lever, and one of the slimmer
heads in the lineup, which together give it the best combined finish of the
test at an average placing of third. Its one weakness is a quick-release
drive, which gave way at 73.74 ft-lb, well short of the solid-drive ratchets.
Spend more and the Proto is the buy-once-cry-once answer, second overall at an
average placing of 5.5: 19.8 passes per rotation, 168 g of back drag, the
lightest directional lever of any production ratchet here at 140 g, and
88.5 ft-lb before its solid drive broke — with a flex head thrown in. Its only
real demerit is bulk, at 207.48 g the heaviest of the eighteen. For strength
on a budget the $22 GearWrench 90 broke at 90.21 ft-lb, more than anything
else tested, and needed just 18 passes per rotation; what keeps it off the top
of the pile is 288 g of back drag, far too much for a quarter-inch ratchet.
Three patterns are worth carrying into a purchase. Drive style predicts
strength far better than price does: every solid-drive ratchet cleared
82 ft-lb, the quick-release designs clustered in the low 70s, and the $108
Nepros and $54 Koken let go at 66.24 and 66.08 ft-lb with heavy damage to
their gear teeth. A coarse mechanism is worse than a heavy one — the Koken
could not advance a socket at all in the 30 degree fixture, and the $8 Der
Erwachte needed 72 passes where the Husky needed 17.6. And head profile is
worth checking if access is the real problem: the GearWrench 90 has the
shortest front-to-back head at just over 9 mm, while the Nepros, TRO Designs,
Koken, and Hazet are the slimmest side-to-side at around 22 mm. At the top of
the price range, the $238 TRO Designs prototype shows what is achievable —
54.68 g, 36 g of back drag, and a 17 g directional lever, all records here —
though a ratchet printed in carbon fiber nylon for comparison failed before it
registered any torque at all.
