The ICON socket comparison
I just got my first ICON socket as a free gift from Harbor Freight. If you spend $34.99 or more you had a choice of one of three free gifts. I chose the 10 mm socket set, a deep and a standard in both 1/4 and 3/8 drive.
The 10 mm socket pack is a play on the old mechanic story of always losing or finding a 10 mm socket
My sockets are mostly Snap-On so I was curious to see an ICON because of all the hype around this Harbor Freight brand. If you watch any YouTube car repair stuff you’ve definitely seen some of the creators use these tools and say they are equal quality to the high-end brands.
To put it in perspective this set is normally $9.99 and that’s for four pieces. I don’t think you’d get the 3/8 drive deep Snap-On on its own for that. At the time of writing this it’s just over $30.
First impressions are that this socket is an exact copy of the Snap-On. It feels the same, has extremely similar markings and its size is the same in every way – such as wall thickness etc obviously the size of being 10 mm is the same – it really feels like they went out of their way to make this a copy.
At this stage I’ve used it a couple of times but it’ll take a lot more use to say if the quality of the known brand is there.
Considering my oldest Snap-On 10 mm socket is almost 30 years old and still works well it won’t be a like-for-like comparison but I’ll see in a year or so if it’s still doing the daily grind.
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