Milwaukee 2441-20 M12 10 oz Caulk Gun tool Only

Why it's worth it

This gun trades your forearm for a 12-volt motor and a variable-speed trigger, and it's compact enough to work inside a cabinet or a window return. It makes sense once you're past five or six tubes in a sitting, and mostly if you already own M12 batteries.

Past a handful of tubes, a motor changes the job. Manual caulking degrades as your hand tires, and the last bead of the day rarely looks like the first. A motor doesn't tire. If you're running weatherproofing across a dozen openings or resealing a commercial bathroom, the consistency you get from motor-driven flow is the real reason to spend here.

The variable-speed trigger gives you a dial most manual guns don't have. Squeeze gently for a slow, thin bead along a shower pan. Open it up for a fat weatherproofing run down a door jamb. You're setting the rate with your finger rather than fighting a fixed mechanical ratio, which helps a lot when you switch between a thin latex and a stiff urethane on the same job.

From our review of 8 caulking guns, by David Sinclair, Managing Editor

What we like

• +Past a handful of tubes, a motor changes the job
• +The variable-speed trigger gives you a dial most manual guns don't have
• +It's small where cordless guns usually aren't
• +The battery platform is a big part of the value

What to know

• –It arrives as a bare tool
• –Owner feedback on this listing is thin
• –For one bathroom a year, it's the wrong tool