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Match the method to the piece: that’s the safest way to clean jewelry at home. The dish-soap soak wins this comparison on the weighted scoring below — cheapest per clean, and the only method safe across nearly every stone type. That’s not automatically the right buy, though: if your jewelry box is exclusively solid gold, platinum, and untreated diamonds, the Magnasonic CD2800 ultrasonic cleaner cleans faster and needs zero scrubbing, with nothing in that category it can damage. The Steamfast SF-1000 JULE steam cleaner sits behind both once you price it out.

Salt air off the water tarnishes silver and gold faster than dry inland air. I’ve learned to rinse and dry jewelry right after a swim instead of letting it sit.

What Does “Safe to Clean Jewelry” Mean?

Sellers market these machines broadly. Gemological guidance draws narrower lines. Here’s where the two disagree, checked row by row against the Gemological Institute of America (GIA) and the American Gem Society (AGS).

None of this means the machines are bad products — they do what they’re built for. It means “safe for jewelry” on a box or a listing is doing a lot of unearned work, and the safety matrix further down this page is the actual answer key.

The Ledger: Scoring All Three on the Axes That Matter

We weighted four axes instead of just comparing price. Material-safety breadth carries the most weight (35%) because a cleaner you can’t safely run on half your jewelry box isn’t actually convenient, whatever it costs. Cost-per-clean is next (25%) — at once-a-month use, five years of ownership tells you more than the sticker price does. Speed and hands-on effort split the rest (20% each): real considerations, but secondary to whether the piece survives the process.

Cost scores are ranked relative to each other, cheapest gets a 10, not on a strict linear scale. Run the weighting and the DIY soak edges the Magnasonic by a hair, 6.85 to 6.50, almost entirely on that first axis. The Steamfast finishes last: it’s the priciest per clean and doesn’t clearly out-safety either competitor, since heat still rules out the same stones GIA flags for ultrasonic. Weight speed and effort more heavily than safety breadth and the Magnasonic pulls back into a near-tie, which is exactly the mixed-jewelry-box case the tie-breaker below works through.

Ultrasonic, Steam, or Soak: How Do You Clean Jewelry?

Magnasonic CD2800: How It Cleans Jewelry

The Magnasonic CD2800 uses 42,000 Hz sound waves to agitate a 20-ounce stainless steel tank of water, generating microscopic bubbles that lift grime out of prongs and settings. It currently runs about $50 — Staples lists it at $50.49. It also runs a single one-button, roughly 3-minute cycle with automatic shut-off, per the manufacturer’s and Walmart’s current listings. There’s no mode dial to fiddle with; you press one button and wait.

Owner feedback across retailers consistently praises it for restoring shine to plain gold chains, wedding bands, and diamond studs — the pieces it’s actually built for. The recurring complaint pattern is people running softer or treated stones through it. They’re surprised when something goes wrong, which is a use-case problem more than a product flaw. A close look under a lighted mirror after a cycle is a quick way to confirm a stone hasn’t clouded or a prong hasn’t loosened.

• Pros: Fast, hands-off, reaches crevices a brush can’t, good value at ~$50.
• Cons: Genuinely unsafe for pearls, opals, emeralds, and other soft or treated stones; can loosen already-fractured or poorly set stones.

Best for: Solid gold or platinum bands, untreated diamonds, and plain metal chains — pieces with no soft, porous, or treated gemstones.

Skip this if: any piece in the load has a pearl, opal, emerald, turquoise, or other soft or treated stone GIA flags. The machine can’t tell the difference, and it won’t warn you before it’s too late.

Steamfast SF-1000: How It Cleans Jewelry

The Steamfast SF-1000 heats a 12-ounce water tank and fires pressurized steam — roughly 58 psi, listed by Steamfast as “4 bar pressured steam” — at a piece held over its basket, cutting through lotion, oil, and everyday grime without ever submerging the item. It runs about $90 direct from Steamfast’s own site ($89.99), heats up in around 4 minutes, and gives roughly 15 minutes of steam time per fill; all figures match Steamfast’s current spec sheet.

Because nothing goes underwater, it’s a popular pick for rings people don’t want to take off. You can steam a band on your finger over the basket. Reviewers who use it regularly like that it’s chemical-free, using only tap water; the main gripe in owner feedback is the shorter run time compared to ultrasonic units, since you’re steaming pieces individually rather than batch-cleaning a tray.

• Pros: No submersion needed, chemical-free, quick on a single ring, good for pieces you rarely remove.
• Cons: Pricier upfront and per clean than the other two methods; concentrated heat is a real risk for the same heat-sensitive stones GIA flags for ultrasonic (opal, emerald, turquoise, and similar), and can be a caution zone for older glued-in settings.

Best for: Rings and bracelets you wear daily and rarely remove, set with hardy, untreated stones or no stones at all.

Skip this if: you’re steaming an emerald, opal, turquoise, or anything with an oiled or resin-filled fracture. Heat is exactly what GIA warns against for those stones, submersion or not — and at nearly $90, it’s the most expensive way to find that out.

DIY Dish-Soap Soak: Dawn with a Sparkle Bright Brush Kit

This is the method the American Gem Society itself walks consumers through: mix warm water with a couple of drops of a mild dish detergent like Dawn, Joy, or Ivory, soak water-safe pieces for about 20 minutes, then use a soft-bristled brush to gently work the solution around the stones and metal before rinsing under warm running water. Sparkle Bright’s package of 10 small detail brushes runs $15.95 direct from the brand’s site. They’re built for reaching under prongs and into filigree without scratching softer metals.

It’s slower than either machine and does nothing for deep tarnish, so it won’t fully replace a professional polish. But because it’s just soap, water, and a soft brush, it’s also the method with the least room to go wrong on a stone you’re unsure about — a fine-point pair of tweezers helps when you need to hold a small earring back or charm steady while you brush.

• Pros: Safest option across the widest range of materials, essentially free after the $15.95 brush kit, no equipment to store or maintain.
• Cons: Slowest method, more hands-on effort, won’t remove heavy tarnish or deep-set grime as thoroughly as ultrasonic.

Best for: Pearls, opals, emeralds, turquoise, costume and plated jewelry, antique pieces, and anything with a treatment or setting history you’re not 100% sure of.

Skip this if: you need a full load cleaned in under 5 minutes, or you’re dealing with heavy tarnish or deep-set grime a hand brush won’t touch. That’s a job for the ultrasonic or a professional polish, not a soak.

Quick-Reference Table: Price, Speed, and What to Avoid

Which Method Is Safe for Your Gemstones and Metals?

This is the question most “how to clean jewelry at home” articles skip, and it’s the one that actually matters if you own anything beyond a plain gold band. We built the matrix below from GIA and AGS guidance rather than guessing.

According to GIA’s guidance on ultrasonic cleaners, “pearls, coral, tortoise shell, ivory, shell cameos, jet, and amber should not be put in an ultrasonic cleaner,” and gems that have been “impregnated or coated with oil, plastic or wax” should also stay out of one. GIA separately lists opal, turquoise, tanzanite, and several other stones as heat- and temperature-sensitive — a caution that applies to steam as much as ultrasonic. For emeralds specifically, GIA’s emerald care guide is direct: “ultrasonic vibrations can weaken already-fractured stones, and hot steam can cause oil or unhardened resin to sweat out of fractures,” and recommends that “using warm, soapy water coupled with gentle scrubbing is the safest way to clean emeralds.”

“Caution” isn’t a green light — it means the risk is lower than an outright “avoid,” but you should still check with a jeweler if the piece is valuable, old, or of unknown origin. If you can’t confirm what a stone is or whether it’s been treated, the DIY soak is the conservative default.

What Does Each Method Cost Over 5 Years?

Upfront price tells you almost nothing about which method is actually cheapest to own. We modeled a household that cleans its jewelry once a month — 60 cleanings over 5 years. We priced out the unit plus realistic consumables for each method, using the current prices verified above.

At monthly use, the DIY soak is the cheapest method per clean by a wide margin — the entire 5-year cost is less than what the steam cleaner costs before you’ve used it once. The ultrasonic cleaner lands in the middle: pricier per use than the soak, but still under a dollar a clean, and it’s doing a job the soak physically can’t do as fast. The steamer is the priciest per clean under this model, which tracks with its higher sticker price against how rarely most people actually reach for it.

The Tie-Breaker: What Wins for a Mixed Jewelry Box

After enough time in salt air to see what it does to metal, I’d tell a friend with a mixed jewelry box to buy the Sparkle Bright kit and skip the machine. If yours mixes a couple of plain gold pieces with even one pearl strand or opal ring, here’s the call: buy the Sparkle Bright brush kit for $15.95 and skip the machine entirely. It’s the only method here safe for everything you own, and at $0.29 a clean it’s already cheaper than either machine before the fifth use.

If your entire collection is genuinely plain gold, platinum, and untreated diamonds — no pearls, no colored stones, nothing inherited or unlabeled — the Magnasonic CD2800 is worth the $50. It’s the one method here where “press the button and walk away” is actually true, and there’s nothing in that narrow category it can damage.

Is the Steamfast Steam Cleaner Worth Buying?

The Steamfast SF-1000 is the one to skip buying new. Its real advantage — cleaning a ring without removing it — matters for a small slice of buyers, and at nearly $90 for a device with the same heat-based blind spot as the ultrasonic, the case for it over a $50 machine or a $16 soap soak is thin.

Store cleaned pieces in a lined drawer organizer rather than a loose pile, since tangled chains and jostling stones undo a clean faster than anything else. None of these three methods replace an actual jeweler inspection — if a stone feels loose, a setting looks worn, or you genuinely don’t know what you’re cleaning, that’s a “take it in” situation, not a “try a method” one.

Updated August 29, 2026: All three prices re-verified live — Magnasonic CD2800 $50.49 at Staples, Steamfast SF-1000 $89.99 direct from Steamfast, Sparkle Bright’s 10-brush kit $15.95. The Magnasonic CD2800 runs a single 3-minute cleaning cycle, confirmed against the manufacturer’s and Walmart’s current listings. See our editorial standards page for how we source and vet these comparisons.

Prices are approximate, current as of publication, and change frequently — confirm the latest price with the retailer before buying.

Published August 15, 2026. Prices and specs checked September 13, 2026.

The NIIMBOT D110 wins this label maker cost of ownership comparison outright. It’s the cheapest label maker to buy, and it’s also the cheapest of the three to own at every point checked, from year one through year five. Its refill tape currently sells at a steep markdown from NIIMBOT’s own list price, which is most of why it wins on cost. What follows is a line-item cost ledger for the DYMO LabelManager 280, the Brother P-touch CUBE Plus, and the NIIMBOT D110. It covers what each one costs to buy and what a roll of its tape costs right now. It also covers what the running total looks like a year in and several years in.

I’ve relabeled more pantry jars and moving boxes than I can count over the years, so tape that survives humidity matters more to me than the machine’s price tag. A cheap label maker with tape that peels in a humid summer ends up costing more than the pricier option.

Which Label Maker Has the Lowest Cost of Ownership?

Total cost of ownership tells you the cheapest option today. It doesn’t tell you whether that’s the machine you should buy, though. Upfront price, phone dependency, and tape durability all cost something too. They just don’t show up in dollars you can add straight into a running total. Here’s how the three score across four axes, weighted by how much each one should matter to a typical buyer.

Total cost of ownership over five years gets the most weight (35%) because it’s the number that separates these three machines the most once you own one for more than a year or two. Upfront hardware price still counts on its own (20%) — a $20.90 device and a $114.99 device aren’t interchangeable purchases even when the long-run math says otherwise. Workflow independence from a phone gets nearly as much weight (25%) because a label maker that stops working when your phone is dead is a different category of tool than one that doesn’t. Tape durability gets the least weight of the four (20%), but it’s the one that decides whether a label survives a damp basement, direct sun, or a moving box.

Which Label Maker’s Cost of Ownership Wins the Ledger?

NIIMBOT scores highest overall on the weighted ledger, at 3.20 out of 5, based on each maker’s current published specs and current retail pricing cross-checked against multiple sellers. Brother is close behind at 3.00, and DYMO trails at 2.80. A fifth of a point separates the top two on a five-point scale — close enough that we’re treating it as a genuine tie and settling it separately, near the bottom of this page. The line-item sections below show the exact numbers and name where each one came from.

Does Print Quality Matter More Than Your Phone?

All three of these devices print a legible label. What separates them day to day is where the “brain” of the device lives. The DYMO LabelManager 280 has its own screen and keyboard, so it works like the label makers people have used for decades — type, print, done. The Brother and the NIIMBOT both hand the typing and design work to a phone app over Bluetooth instead. That unlocks templates and fonts a tiny built-in screen can’t match. But it also means the device is useless the moment your phone is dead or out of range.

Label Maker Cost of Ownership: Hardware Price on Day One

The DYMO LabelManager 280 is a standalone, keyboard-equipped label maker with a graphical display. DYMO’s own site currently shows it out of stock with no price listed, but Quill.com has it at $103.99 (or $98.99 each if you buy two), and LabelValue.com lists it at $100.47. The Brother P-touch CUBE Plus (PT-P710BT) connects to a phone over Bluetooth and is built around Brother’s mobile apps rather than a keyboard; Staples currently lists it at $114.99. The NIIMBOT D110 is a compact, app-only label maker using direct thermal printing (no ink or ribbon), currently $20.90 on NIIMBOT’s own store, a “limited time” markdown from its $29.99 list price.

What a Refill Roll Costs

This is the number that actually moves the running total. DYMO’s D1 tape sells in a 6-roll pack for $96.49 at Staples: $96.49 ÷ 6 = $16.08 per 23-ft roll. Brother’s TZe-231 laminated tape is $44.98 for a 4-pack at Staples: $44.98 ÷ 4 = $11.245 per 26.2-ft roll (we round to $11.25). NIIMBOT’s own online store currently prices its D110-compatible white label roll at $6.90, marked down from an $11.99 regular price. NIIMBOT still sells pre-cut label rolls rather than continuous-length tape, so “one roll” stays the comparable refill unit across all three brands.

NIIMBOT’s tape is the cheapest of the three per roll. Brother’s tape is also cheaper than DYMO’s, which is the odd part of this whole comparison: the pricier of the two thermal-transfer machines has the cheaper tape.

Annual Tape Cost at a Realistic Usage Rate

Manufacturers don’t publish a “typical labels per year” figure, so this is our own stated assumption, not a sourced statistic: a moderate home or small-office user going through roughly one roll every two months — six rolls a year. At that rate:

Six rolls a year happens to equal exactly one 6-pack of DYMO’s D1 tape, so its annual cost lines up exactly with the 6-pack price: $96.49. At this usage rate, NIIMBOT’s annual tape bill is the lowest of the three — about $55 a year less than DYMO’s and about $26 less than Brother’s.

The Running Total: Label Maker Cost of Ownership by Year

Add the hardware price to the annual tape cost, year by year:

At current prices, NIIMBOT is the cheapest of the three at every point checked, from year one straight through year five, and the gap isn’t small: by year five it’s running $224.44 less than Brother and $358.54 less than DYMO. Brother stays consistently cheaper than DYMO at every point checked. DYMO is the most expensive of the three at every year mark — its higher hardware price and its higher tape cost per roll compound instead of leveling off over time.

Claims Check: What Each Maker Says vs. What Holds Up

Marketing language and sourced reality, row by row.

Real Differentiators and Dealbreakers

• DYMO — skip this if you want the cheapest total cost. It’s not the cheapest device, and it has the highest per-roll tape cost of the three and the highest running total at every year mark checked. Its case rests entirely on the standalone keyboard, not on price.
• Brother — skip this if you need it to work without a phone in reach. It cannot print a label without a paired phone or a USB-connected computer running its software, despite sitting in the middle of the cost math.
• NIIMBOT — skip this if you’re labeling anything that lives in sunlight, heat, or gets handled roughly. It’s the cheapest of the three to own at every year mark checked, but it’s still a direct-thermal machine, and the Claims Check above is the reason to think twice before using it on anything that needs to stay legible for years.

Who Should Buy Which Label Maker

Anyone who wants a label maker that works without an app should buy the DYMO. Its built-in keyboard is the whole appeal. For labels that need to survive moisture, sunlight, or rough handling, look at the Brother instead. Laminated TZe tape is built and marketed for exactly that, and the Claims Check above found nothing that contradicts it. It’s also the middle option on cost. If you just want to label pantry jars or storage bins, buy the NIIMBOT instead. Phone independence and years of sun exposure won’t matter much for that use case. At current prices it’s the cheapest to buy and the cheapest to own at every point checked.

So Which Label Maker Would I Buy?

NIIMBOT wins the weighted ledger at 3.20 to Brother’s 3.00 — a fifth of a point on a five-point scale, which in practice is a tie, not a decision. Reweight workflow independence a little heavier, which plenty of buyers reasonably would, and Brother pulls back ahead outright.

If it were my own money, I’d buy the Brother P-touch CUBE Plus, since I’ve seen how fast cheap tape gives up in heat and humidity. NIIMBOT’s current $6.90 tape price is explicitly marked as a “limited time” markdown from an $11.99 regular listing, and steep discount pricing like that doesn’t reliably hold — a five-year total built on a sale price isn’t one worth trusting. Brother’s tape, by contrast, is priced as a standard listing rather than a markdown. Brother also doesn’t carry NIIMBOT’s Claims Check problem — direct thermal labels fade with heat and light in a way laminated TZe tape is built and tested against. The USB backup means it isn’t purely phone-dependent either, which quietly removes its own dealbreaker for anyone who keeps a computer nearby. None of that is true of the DYMO, which loses the ledger outright and isn’t the cheapest option either.

Rounding out your organization setup? See our comparison of cable management boxes for taming cords, or browse our full Organization category for more storage comparisons.

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Published August 15, 2026. Prices and specs checked August 29, 2026.

In this comparison of modular tool boxes, DEWALT TOUGHSYSTEM 2.0’s 24-in. rolling box (DWST08450) and Milwaukee PACKOUT’s 22-in. rolling box (48-22-8426) both carry a manufacturer-rated 250-lb capacity. Milwaukee still wins PicksWeTrust’s weighted Ledger below, on the strength of an ecosystem DEWALT hasn’t meaningfully expanded in three years. Craftsman VERSASTACK’s CMST60402 tower is rated for less than half that weight and finishes a distant third on the Ledger, though it’s still the right buy for a garage that stores seasonal gear rather than a box that gets loaded and hauled daily.

I’ve hauled enough gear through humid summers and sudden downpours to trust a weather rating more than a brand name, since a box that lets in dust or a quick rain ruins whatever’s stored inside it just as fast as dropping it would. When two systems carry the same IP rating, the tie usually comes down to what else you can add to the box later, not the box itself.

The Ledger: Scoring Three Modular Tool Boxes

Four axes, weighted for what actually differs between three boxes that all claim to solve the same problem. Rated weight capacity and weight-capacity-per-dollar each carry 30% of the score, because a box either holds the load you put in it or it doesn’t, and a price only means something next to what you’re getting for it. Ecosystem depth carries 25% — the box itself is a one-time purchase, but the accessory catalog is a multi-year bet, and none of these three brands will let you split it across systems. Weather and dust resistance takes the remaining 15%: real and documented, but less decisive day to day than whether the box holds what you put in it.

Milwaukee wins the Ledger by 10 points, and nearly all of that gap comes from one axis: ecosystem. Strip that axis out and score capacity and value alone, and DEWALT edges ahead of PACKOUT instead — the full math is in the Tie-Breaker section below. Craftsman isn’t close on either of the two heaviest-weighted axes, which is the honest case against it for daily hauling, not a knock on what the box is actually built to do.

Which Modular Tool Boxes Fit Your Work?

Every one of these three locks you into a single brand’s accessory catalog — none of them stack, latch, or mount with a competitor’s pieces. The box is the entry fee. The ecosystem is what you’re actually buying, though.

Milwaukee PACKOUT: Modular Tool Boxes That Keep Growing

The rolling box is IP65-rated, built from impact-resistant polymer with metal-reinforced corners, and carries a 250-lb weight rating with 3,450 cubic inches of interior space — Milwaukee’s own published figure. It’s also $139.00 at Home Depot as of this writing. It locks to other PACKOUT pieces through integrated cleats and has a mounting point for Milwaukee’s One-Key Bluetooth tracking tag.

What separates it isn’t really the box, though — it’s what you can add to it later. Milwaukee’s PACKOUT lineup is the largest of the three and still growing, with new components launching through 2026, according to ToolGuyd’s modular storage coverage. The same coverage notes that DEWALT “last expanded the ToughSystem modular tool box system around 3 years ago,” outside a couple of large components added more recently.

Skip this if you only need one box, ever, with no plan to add a second PACKOUT piece. You’re paying for depth you won’t use, and DEWALT carries the same 250-lb rating for less money today.

DEWALT TOUGHSYSTEM 2.0 DWST08450: Same Capacity, Ten Dollars More

DEWALT’s current rolling box matches PACKOUT’s 250-lb rating and IP65 resistance, at $125.00 as of this writing — confirmed at both Home Depot and Acme Tools. Two-piece metal front latches and auto-connect side latches are built for one-handed stacking. DEWALT’s own listing states the box stays backward-compatible with most earlier TOUGHSYSTEM components; we found no independent test of that claim, only DEWALT’s word for it.

Skip this if you already own several PACKOUT pieces, or you know you’ll eventually want a specialty module — a dust-extractor mount, a two-drawer unit — that Milwaukee has added in the past couple of years and DEWALT hasn’t matched.

Craftsman VERSASTACK: Modular Tool Boxes for the Garage

VERSASTACK is a three-piece stack: a wheeled mobile base, a deep storage box, and a top organizer with a clear lid, built around IP54 dust and water resistance, a step down from the IP65 rating on the other two. Per Craftsman’s own listing, the mobile base alone is rated for 66 lbs, and the full three-piece stack is rated for 110 lbs combined. List price runs $139.99–$149.99 depending on retailer (Acme Tools currently shows $149.99), and it’s frequently discounted well below that — DealNews has logged deals as low as $99–$109 on this exact model.

Skip this if you’re hauling a loaded box to a jobsite daily. A 110-lb full-stack rating is under half of what the other two systems carry, so 66 lbs is the number that matters if you’re only using the mobile base on its own.

Price-Per-Value: What You’re Paying Per Pound of Rated Capacity

For example, only Milwaukee publishes an interior storage volume for this box — 3,450 cubic inches, per its own listing. DEWALT and Craftsman don’t publish an equivalent figure for these models, and the third-party retailer dimensions we checked for DEWALT’s interior were inconsistent with each other. Rather than present a number that looks precise and isn’t verifiable, we’re reporting the gap plainly.

What all three brands do publish cleanly is exterior footprint and rated weight capacity, so here’s the same math using those instead — exterior size isn’t the same as usable interior space, so treat this as a size-for-money and weight-for-money comparison, not a storage-capacity one.

DEWALT still wins on weight-capacity-per-dollar — at $125.00, per Home Depot and Acme Tools, its lead over PACKOUT runs about 11%, and it’s still about two and a half times Craftsman’s figure. Craftsman actually has the largest exterior footprint per dollar of the three — which is exactly the trap this section exists to catch. A bigger box isn’t a more capable one if its weight rating is under half what the other two carry.

Claims Check: What Each Listing Says vs. What We Verified

What follows is each brand’s own published claim, checked against that brand’s current listing and, where one exists, independent coverage — row by row, with a verdict on each.

Nothing here contradicts a manufacturer’s headline number. The one place skepticism is warranted is that Acme Tools reference price, and it’s a pricing-display habit, not a false spec.

The Tie-Breaker: Which One I’d Buy With My Own Money

The Ledger favors Milwaukee, and that’s the honest result once ecosystem depth gets weighted in. But strip that one axis out and score just capacity and value — the two things that decide whether a box survives being loaded, and whether you overpaid for it — and DEWALT edges ahead: 6.0 out of a possible 6.0 weighted points, against Milwaukee’s 5.7, using the same weights as the Ledger above.

I’m not building a five-year PACKOUT fleet, since gear that sits in a humid garage does better with fewer parts to track down replacements for. If I needed a rolling box tomorrow, I’d buy the DEWALT TOUGHSYSTEM 2.0 — same rated capacity as PACKOUT, for $14 less at today’s prices, and I wouldn’t be paying an ecosystem premium for modules I may never buy. That calculus flips fast for anyone who already owns PACKOUT pieces, or knows they’ll keep adding them. For that buyer, Milwaukee is the right call, and it’s why the Ledger’s overall winner still stands.

How Do the Three Compare on Paper?

Modular Tool Boxes: Questions Answered

Does DEWALT’s TOUGHSYSTEM 2.0 price vary by retailer?

Not currently — DWST08450 runs $125.00 at both Home Depot and Acme Tools, per their current listings, and its rated capacity and IP65 rating hold steady across both.

Does Craftsman’s IP54 Rating Matter for Garage Use?

Less than it would for daily jobsite hauling. IP54 protects against dust ingress and water spray from any direction, per Craftsman’s own listing — enough for a garage or a covered truck bed, but a step down from the IP65 rating Milwaukee and DEWALT both carry, which adds low-pressure water jet resistance on top of that.

Can a Milwaukee PACKOUT box lock onto a DEWALT or Craftsman base?

No. Milwaukee’s integrated cleats, DEWALT’s auto-connect latches, and Craftsman’s metal side latches are each proprietary to that brand’s own lineup, and none of the three cross-connect.

Rounding out a garage storage setup? See our comparison of outdoor storage options for gear that doesn’t fit in a tool box, or browse our full Organization category for more storage comparisons.