Hitachi NT1850 18g Finishing/Brad Nailer 18v cordless - First Impressions Review

In this video I review the Hitachi NT1850 cordless 18g brad / finishing nailer which runs on the Hitach 18v batteries.
 
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In this video I'm going to talk about my first impressions of the Hitachi NT1850 18v cordless 18g brad nailer or finish nailer.  I've had the tool for around 2 months and I've used it quite a lot since then.  
Before I got the Hitachi nailer I was using a pneumatic nailer the Makita AF505N hooked up to my air compressor and even though these are quite different animals, I thought it'd be worth comparing the two for those who are interested in making the shift from a pneumatic nailer to a battery operated one so I'll do that as part of this video too.
But first I'll talk through the features available on the tool and how it operates.
This tool has a brushless motor for improved run time, durability and it has no wearing parts so requires less maintenance than gas or pneumatic nailers. It fires nails with compessed air using Hitachi's air spring drive system and is capable of firing 18g nails from 16mm to 50mm in length
It has an integrated tool hook which folds over
An LED light for extra visibility
A safety lock switch to prevent the nailer from firing if the nose and trigger get pressed accidentally while the nailer is in a bag for example
Tool-less nose for clearing any nail blockages, although I've not had to open that up yet.
And a depth adjustment wheel to set how deep you want the nails to fire in.
The control panel has three buttons, power button which turns it on and off and by the way if you leave it on it will automatically switch off after half an hour, a function button which you can press to go from normal trigger operation to bump fire mode and a button to check battery level.
I've tried the nailer with both soft woods and hard woods and it's always sunk the heads of the nails below the surface of the wood even with the longer nails.  The nail holes it leaves aren't too big either, I used to have a nailer by Tacwise that left really large and ugly holes which were always difficult to hide.
Now I'll talk about what I like and dislike about the nailer.
Likes:
The best thing for me is not being tethered to an air hose, which in a tiny workshop like mine just makes life so much easier.  It also makes it so easy to use the nailer outside of the workshop, for working off site or in my home or garden because I don't have to drag my heavy air compressor along with me!  It also means I can potentially get rid of my air compressor at some point which would free up a decent amount of space in my workshop extension.
I also like how quiet it is - I expected it to be louder than it is, and while it doesn't make that satisfying noise that my air nailer makes it is nice and quiet.
I really like the nose on the gun too I find it's really good for being able to fire the nails accurately right where you want them.
It's extremely quick to fire too, capable of firing 3 nails per second.  For the kind of work I do I doubt that I would never need to fire nails that quickly, but it's nice to know that this tool is no slouch.
I also like is the vision panel on the side of the magazine - when it turns yellow you know that you need to put more nails in, that's useful.
It feels really nice to hold and the build quality seems excellent, it feels like a tool that would withstand quite a lot of abuse.
Battery life seems really good, I've been using the nailer with a 3Ah battery and it seems to last really well - apparently you can fire 1600 nails on a 3Ah battery
And as I mentioned earlier it drives nails in fully in both soft woods and hard woods which is much more than can be said for the electric nailer I used to use by Tacwise, that thing could barely fire nails in to a block of cheese so I got rid of that one pretty quickly
Dislikes:
I don't like the fact that there is no diagram on the nail depth adjustment wheel to tell me which direction to twist the wheel in order to set the nails in more or less deep. I can never remember which way to turn it so I'll probably just use a sharpie to draw an arrow or something on there at some point.
The battery charge indicator on the control panel only has two lights to tell you if the battery is more or less than half full, would have been nice to be able to tell more accurately how much juice is left in the battery - for me that's not a major issue but I thought it worth mentioning
It's obviously bigger and heavier than a pneumatic nailer, but the same applies to all of the battery operated nailers - like the ones available from DeWalt, Makita, Milwaukee or Ryobi.  haven't personally found the size or weight to be an issue but if you frequently use a finish nailer in tight spaces, the extra size is something you'll want to consider.  But for me the extra size and weight is an easy compromise to make because of the extra flexibility that a battery operated nailer gives me.
So in summary, I really love this nailer, I haven't used my air nailer since I got it and I probably won't ever use it again, because the Hitachi does everything I need it to, it does it extremely well, and I'm over the moon with it.