Okay, I confess this is one gadget I "cheated" with. Rather than review it myself I dragged my team in.

Imagine one expansive kitchen with curtain-less windows and an even bigger dining room in the same poor state.

The deal was I would cook up a roast beef lunch with all the trimmings (incl a lovely gravy made with half a bottle of red wine) and the team would put up the blinds for me.

Enter the Bosch Uneo - as we discovered, the perfect multi-function, cordless drill for home DIY.
Now to be honest I am a bit wary of cordless power tools because back in the day when I last bashed about with them they were heavy, underpowered and ran out of charge at a disgustingly useless rate. I wondered how the Uneo would live up to these memories and had a huge corded drill on standby.
As you'll see, I need not have worried!

Packaged in a sensibly sturdy tool box and loaded with everything you needed to get started, I did my bit and charged it up before the team arrived.
Handing it over, K' checked through the kit supplied and seemed impressed.

Bits - I do believe that's the real technical term - were all included.

· 2 x wood,
· 2 x masonry,
· 2 x Posi Drive,
· a Phillips and
· a flathead

Much delight was had in that no chuck key was needed (oh, can you recall the days of your father stomping around the garage, raiding through his work pockets looking for those... not going to happen with the Uneo! *smug*)

I hadn't given a great deal of thought to the enormity of the task at hand - four huge blinds had to be taken down from upstairs and re-hung in my kitchen and living room but first all the railings already in place had to be removed.

K' was busily using the Uneo at every opportunity and with such high ceilings, constantly reaching up doing all the screwing, unscrewing and drilling one handed.

However the Uneo didn't falter at all and K' liked the design and weight of it immensely - and the balanced feedback. Whilst there was a sense of being able to feel what the Uneo was doing K' wasn't being vibrated to death.

The forward and reverse function was constantly in use and K' was chuffed to pieces with the LED system that allowed you to tell at a glance what mode you were in. The variable speed function also came in handy. The Uneo also has the incredibly useful pneumatic hammering function too and all of this is backed up with a LED display letting you know how much charge you have left.

At the end of the day my kitchen and lounge were transformed. All blinds were hung perfectly, my team well fed and I checked the charge on the Uneo expecting it to be on its last legs. There was over 30% power left and considering what it had already done, 30% more amounted to a great deal.

So I asked K' about the instructions, searching for a fault, a weakness but K' was adamant - the instructions were clear and concise with no obvious problems in the translation from German to English (Bosch is a German company)

It seems that the Uneo does what it says it will do and does it well. So well, that it nearly went out the door with K' at the end of the night!

If DIY is your thing, if getting into tight little corners and avoiding tripping over cords (what a fuss!) is important and having one tool that can do an array of jobs faultlessly, the Bosch Uneo is an essential addition to your DIY toolkit. It won't break either your bank, wrist or plans.

Vielen dank, Bosch.

RRP £119.99 (inc VAT)

See the Bosch website for more information.