I have a Makita variable speed reversible hand drill which works well enough, but the variable speed description is a misnomer. Technically, yes, it does run at more than one speed, but the next-to-useless hair trigger on that thing allows you to have the drill completely off, running so slowly that it may as well be completely off, a tiny range through which it accelerates to some random almost-full-speed speed, and full speed. If you are very patient, and meticulous about depressing the trigger slowly while limiting its motion by locking your fingers together, you can, occasionally, hit a speed that is somewhere in between the extremes, and hold it there just long enough to feel good about yourself until you touch the bit to the workpiece, wherupon it either stops completely, or switches to full speed and burns out the bit.
What bugs me the most about this is not so much that this particular drill sucks, as I bought it without doing any research or getting any recommendations, but rather the fact that tools like this exist at all. I can’t imagine anyone who bought one of these and is happy with it, unless all you are doing is drilling small holes in soft wood. Speed should be dialed-in, with a control separate from the trigger, which should be on-off. How much of a stretch is this to figure out?
Incompetent knuckleheads.