‘Power Tools’ Mobile App Review

Unless you spend a bunch of time in a garage, it’s not always second nature to know which power tool to use for which ill-advised do-it-yourself project. It’s bad enough that our projects always end in injury and the shame of paying a handyman — or wilting as we beg our disapproving father-in-law to work for free — to fix up our failures.

The app dubbed simply Power Tools may not turn us into carpenters, but at least it points us in the right direction into the intimidating forest of threatening tools.

While home improvement chains offer their own free apps that help you sift through the mountains of information out year, we’re not willing to trust those because we suspect they’re geared to make us spend as much as possible.

Power Tools, on the other hand, is a neutral party that spells out its info and lets us read up and sound like we know what we’re talking about when we brave the aisles of Lowe’s or Home Depot on the hunt for a belt sander or pressure washer.

The app is straightforward and dull, providing pictures of tools that apply to certain jobs (“saw & cut,” “grind & sand” and “drill & drive”), then breaking those categories down to specific tools, explaining what they look like, what they are and what they’re do like we’re 5-year-olds. There’s even a “sound” button we can tap to hear what a tool sounds like.

The app is condescending to a fault, but also thorough. We wish it would have gone even fartherin the hand-holding and included links to videos to spell out how to use them. We need all the help we can get. After all, just because people say we are tools doesn’t mean we know how they work.

Power Tools ($0.99), available in iOS platforms, was published by Bizpo. We used the app for two hours on an iPod Touch.