I always thought crescent style wrenches were useless. They’re difficult to adjust, wouldn’t hold the nut tightly, and jam up the adjustment mechanism too easily. The issue is that you have a bunch of different sized fasteners. As an occasional user, who only needs a wrench every few months or so, buying complete sets of metric and standard wrenches isn’t appealing. First, they take up space and second, there’s the hassle of grabbing 4 different ones and trying to figure out which fits the fastener. So I needed something better.
I’ve been using pliers. Well, that’s great as a one-off, but it damages the nut and recently, just to annoy people, many nuts are coming with the corners pre-rounded for some reason, so they’re hard to grip with pliers. I recently became aware that most of my complaints about crescent style wrenches might have been just due to me using cheap ones. So I thought I’d look into what else was out there.
Cheap
Well, I just skipped these. I understand that if the issues described above don’t bother you, you can get one for $10 or far less that might work OK.
Mid-Range
My research and Amazon led me to the Channel Lock brand, WideAzz wrenches. I got an 8”. I was pleasantly surprised, as I have been with Channel Lock before. Yes, they’re made in China, but like their pliers, they’re very high quality. The price is up there, but nothing like the “high end”. I paid around $23 for them.
This wrench is very tightly put together. There’s almost no slop in the adjustable end, the adjustment mechanism is very smooth to use and it did not bind on me. It also has a very nice feature with markings of the wrench size it’s set to, like 1/2”, 1/4” etc. This is my favorite of this style I’ve ever used.
High-End
I was looking for the obvious “high-end” Made in USA version and came across S-K tools wrench. I also got the 8” version. This one was $33. In every way, this wrench was worse than the 1/3 cheaper Channel Lock. Paraphrased from my Amazon review:
This is a 3-star wrench. It’s not complete junk, but it’s similar to much cheaper crescent style wrenches that caused me to write them off years ago. It has noticeable slop in the adjustable side, the screw adjuster can jam when closed and is not smooth when rotating. The wrench also lacks features found in many others, specifically the opening markings (i.e. lines on the jaws for 1/2″, 1/4″ etc.) It’s obvious it doesn’t have that, but it goes to show why I gave this 3-star wrench only 2 stars.
I deducted a star for value. This is one of the more expensive wrenches. You can easily get a wrench with these features with this sort of grinding and sloppy feel for 1/3 as much here on Amazon. I can’t speak to how strong these are. There’s a Youtube review where these do stand up to a huge cheater bar, but I’m not using this wrench that way. I’m using it by hand.
Another different expensive option
My actual preference is a bit out of left field. I ended up back at pliers, but a special type. Knipex makes pliers wrenches. I got a 10” one with the comfort grip. These were the most expensive at $55, but the highest quality, the easiest and quickest to use mechanism and they worked amazingly well. They combine what I already liked about pliers with the jaws of a wrench so they don’t damage the nuts. Now, for someone like me, and many home users, you’re not using these to get into tight locations or apply a lot of force. You’re using them to hold nuts when you screw in bolts to assemble random purchases. In this case, these are a great option and I highly recommend them.
Conclusion
It depends a lot on what you’re using the wrenches for and your budget. All of these options at least theoretically can replace 2 wrench sets for cheaper, and certainly take up far less space. What they don’t do is get into tight spaces. I didn’t test applying more torque than using them by hand, and can’t speak to that sort of use. I’m not using them to break nuts free. I’m using them to hold fasteners for installation or removal of pre-fab things like barbecues that you have to assemble. I recommend the Knipex if you want to pay the $55. My second choice is the Channel Lock.