REVIEW: Crest’s Tool Guardian Range Might Save Your Life SUBSCRIBE

Surge protection is a big deal these days, with more products operating at different voltage, and more powerful products making it alarmingly easy to overload a circuit, especially if you happen to live in an older building.

Crest’s Tool Guardian range is a bodyguard between you and those whirling, heavy-machine tools you may plug in, giving you peace of mind, and ensuring you don’t need to do the maths to figure out if you’re about to blow up the electricity grid in your home.

The Tool Guardian 5 Socket Power Board with Worklight and USB Charging (pictured above) is a beast of a unit. Retailing for $49, and exclusively available through Bunnings, it is a well-designed, portable conduit which can operate as a high-powered torch, a power board for five products to plug into, and a fast-charging USB connector for your on-site portable speakers and mobile device.

It has a master switch if you need to down tools in an instant, and the 1.2 metre cable is sufficient, without becoming a tangled mess. It also wraps neatly around the legs, so you can move it around easily.

The surge protection is the main feature here, although the two USB-A Charging ports will be handy, with a maximum of 3.1A at 5V, you’ll lose count of how many times this feature saves you from a dead phone when on a worksite.

REVIEW: Crest’s Tool Guardian Range Might Save Your Life SUBSCRIBE

The LED torch is surprisingly powerful, and isn’t just a bonus – you could use this product solely for this torch and you’d have a well-built, and handy tool.

It looks like an alien too, which is a bonus in anyone’s book.

This Tool Guardian 5 Socket Power Board is a similar power accessory, although this is less suited for mobile and on-site work, and more the type of thing you install in your garage as the backbone of your home tool operation. When installed above a workbench, it shines a handy LED light down on your surface — thankfully this can be turned off if it’s too intense — and the 1.2 metre cable means you can plug it in, hook it to a wall, and forget about it.

The surge protection means you can plug in an array of tools without fear – this is especially important in a shed, which often has the wonkiest wiring in the house, being more exposed to the elements and less considered than the house wiring.

This retails for $34.95 (again, exclusively at Bunnings) and is well worth having in the house as a standard supply.

Work sites tend to have mobile electricity generators, rather than fixed wired setup, making products like this all the more vital. It’s easy to overestimate the might of a wall-plug, and underestimate the voltage running through your tools – a mistake that could prove fatal.