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How to pick
Be honest about how far you plan to go. If you only want to swap a laptop battery or open a console once, a small kit is plenty and the big one will sit in a drawer. If you expect to open phones, tablets and laptops regularly, buy the proper kit once and stop replacing cheap drivers that round off screws. That is the real failure mode with bargain toolkits: the bits are soft, they chew up the screw head, and now a ten minute job needs a drill. Get something to keep the screws in order too, because modern laptops use several screw lengths and putting a long one in a short hole cracks the board.
What I recommend
Start small
Be honest about how far you plan to go. If you only want to swap a laptop battery or open a console once, a small kit is plenty and the big one will sit in a drawer.
iFixit Essential Electronics Toolkit
A driver, a set of precision bits, an opening pick and a spudger. Covers a laptop battery, a memory upgrade, a console clean out and most of what people actually attempt at home. Start here unless you know you need more.
- Covers the vast majority of home repairs
- Bits are properly hardened, unlike bargain kits
- Compact enough for a drawer
- No suction handle or anti static strap
- Limited bit selection for unusual screws
- Not enough if you open things weekly
- Includes
- Driver, bits, pick, spudger
- Good for
- Laptop battery, RAM, console clean
- Bits
- Around 16
- Skip if
- You open things weekly
If you do this often
Buy the proper kit once and stop replacing cheap drivers that round off screws. That is the real failure mode with bargain toolkits: the bits are soft, they chew up the screw head, and now a ten minute job needs a drill.
iFixit Pro Tech Toolkit
This is the kit that comes up again and again from people who do this for a living. Sixty odd precision bits, proper opening tools, a suction handle, an anti static wrist strap and tweezers, in a case that folds out so nothing rolls off the table.
- Bits are hardened properly and do not round off
- Case folds out so nothing rolls away
- Includes anti static strap and suction handle
- Covers essentially every consumer device
- Expensive for occasional use
- Bulky
- More than most people will ever need
- Bits
- 64 precision, hardened
- Also has
- Suction handle, tweezers, picks
- Static
- Anti static wrist strap included
- Case
- Folds out, nothing rolls away
iFixit Manta Driver Kit
If you already have opening tools and just want the widest set of precision bits, this is it. More than a hundred, including the odd security screws manufacturers use to keep you out.
- Covers security and tamper proof screws
- Very well organised case
- Highest quality bits iFixit make
- Bits only, no opening tools at all
- Overkill unless you hit unusual screws often
- Expensive
- Bits
- 112, the widest set
- Covers
- Security and tamper proof screws
- Has
- Bits only, no opening tools
- Get it if
- You keep hitting screws you cannot turn
The bit everyone forgets
Modern laptops use several screw lengths and putting a long one in a short hole cracks the board.
Magnetic project mat
A magnetic pad you write on with a marker. Screws stick where you put them and you note which hole they came from. Sounds fussy until the first time you finish a laptop with three screws left over.
- Prevents the most common repair mistake
- Wipe clean and reuse forever
- Cheap
- Takes up bench space
- Magnets are strong, keep drives away
- Marker wears off if not the right type
- Surface
- Magnetic, screws stay put
- Marks
- Write on it with a dry marker
- Size
- Big enough for a laptop
- Why
- Screw lengths differ, mixing them cracks boards
Related reading
Opened it up and now it will not go back together?
It happens to everyone. Bring it to me rather than forcing it, and I will have a look before anything gets broken.