Phaze 275-piece tool chest

Part number: 278734 Price: £95.00

From: Halfords 0345 504 5353 halfords.com

With 275 pieces in a four-drawer lockable tool chest, the cost of each item averages less than 35p. There’s an appealing assortment of tools with a mixture of metric and AF quarter, 3/8- and ½-inch drive sockets and spanners (9mm-17mm and 3/8in- 11/16 in for the spanners), along with three ratchets. There’s a 21mm spark plug socket, but no 16mm, as well as a wide range of screwdrivers, including a ratchet screwdriver and huge selection of bits. Everything is neatly stored in plastic trays, although none of them are labelled.

With modern vehicles using metric fastenings, the range of older AF sizes does appear to be overkill. For example, the range of Allen key bits only goes up to 6mm and there’s 11 bits for AF sizes up to ¼-inch, so surely it would have been more useful to extend the range of metric Allen key bits up to 10mm? We also could not see the point of including packets of picture frame hooks and wire and wall plugs.

As a starter toolkit, this one looks impressive, but all our testers felt the quality of the tools wasn’t as good, but that’s largely reflected in the price. Instead of splitting the tools between metric and AF, it may be better to concentrate on a better assortment of metric tools. However, if you need to work on vehicles with both, then this toolkit is a good starter.