4 Ace Hardware Finds That Outshine Home Depot In Price And Quality

We may receive a commission on purchases made from links.

Ace Hardware was founded more than a century ago in Chicago and has since grown to more than 5,000 stores, many of which are individually owned by local residents. It’s a good alternative to corporate-owned hardware megastores, and Ace retail locations offer a tremendous variety of top-quality products at competitive prices. You can get paint from the likes of Benjamin Moore, Kilz, and Rust-Oleum, and Ace carries some of the world’s top power tool brands like Milwaukee, DeWalt, and Craftsman.

If you’re shopping for a cordless impact wrench you might find that offerings and pricing are close or identical among retailers, but there are plenty of items to be found at Ace that are better or cheaper than comparable ones at Home Depot. We scoured the two retailers’ current product lines to find a few things you’re best buying at Ace Hardware.

Anyone who goes camping or hunting or heats their home with a wood-burning stove knows the value of a durable, lightweight hatchet. Ace carries the Estwing Sportsman’s 13.5-inch axe for $46.99, and this hatchet has a one-piece forged steel build, so you don’t have to worry about the handle and head ever coming loose from one another. The leather cover on the handle helps you keep a secure, comfortable grip in cold conditions, and this axe comes with a nylon sheath to protect the hand-sharpened blade.

Trailspace reviewed this hatchet back in 2022 giving it four out of five stars for solid construction, although the reviewer sanded and refinished the handle after finding it a touch slippery out of the box. The reviewer concluded by declaring “Zero buyer’s remorse. Well made, robust little hatchet that I consider fit for [the] purpose.”

This axe is small enough to fit in many toolboxes, and all 13 buyers who have left reviews on Ace’s website as of this writing rank it five out of five stars. Home Depot doesn’t carry this exact product, and the comparable Fiskars Norden 14-inch camp hatchet sells there for $108.99. That hatchet has a bare wood handle and overmolded head design, so your grip won’t be quite as secure as with the Estwing and repeated use might loosen the connection between the head and handle. Estwing offers a limited lifetime warranty on its axes, although damage from ordinary wear or misuse, like using it as a hammer or pry bar, aren’t covered.

Working on electronic gadgets or automotive electric projects, and even some crafting tasks, require soldering; the use of heat to melt soft metal wire to make a conductive or just plain sturdy connection. Carl Weller invented the transformer-based soldering iron in the 1940s, and the company that carries his name is still a leader in the segment. Ace sells the Weller 200/260-watt soldering gun for $59.99; it works just like a pencil-style soldering iron, but it has a pistol shape and trigger to activate the heating element. 

The corded tool comes with three tips for different tasks; the allen wrench needed to swap them, a flux brush and small coil of soldering wire, plus a blow-molded plastic case to hold it all. The gun has two LED lights to illuminate what you’re working on, and the dual-position trigger allows you to choose between 200 and 260 watts of power.

As of this writing, it enjoys an average rating of 4.5 out of five stars from 22 Ace buyers, and a review at Test Equipment Depot noted that it heats up to working temperature in just six seconds. It’s also UL and CUL listed, meaning it’s been certified for use in the United States and Canada. Home Depot also carries the Weller 200/260W professional soldering gun, but it sells for $80.98 there; that’s almost 60% more than at Ace.

The joy of having a dog in your house can be tempered a bit by the chore of removing poop from your yard, but the Arm & Hammer dog waste pickup tool makes this nasty job easier for just $25.99 from Ace stores or online. The kit includes a plastic bin that pivots on its handle, a rake, and four threaded plastic pole sections. Two bin bags are included with the kit, and you can also use plastic shopping bags to line the bucket.

Home Depot doesn’t carry the Arm & Hammer system or anything like it; most pet waste scoopers there are of the jaw style and priced at $50 or more. These scoopers have handle and spring mechanisms that can wear out and fail while the only operational issue with the Arm and Hammer scooper is getting the bucket to sit flat on the ground while you rake in the waste. This becomes easier as the bucket fills up, and it’s large enough to handle a weekly cleanup for one or two dogs in one pass. Home Depot’s waste cleanup products at a similar price point are limited to rakes and handheld scoopers that put you much closer to the stinky mess.

The Arm and Hammer system is the only item on this list with which I have personal first-hand experience; I used this rake and bucket for more than a year and it held up well to the combined output of a 90-pound Labrador retriever and a 35-pound hound mix. The rake and bin were easy to clean with a hose; I subsequently sent one to my sister as a housewarming present and she is still using it more than a decade later.

A good small cooler can come in handy whether you’re at the beach, a tailgate party, or enjoying a quick roadside picnic as a road trip break. Yeti is owned by the Cortec group – a private equity firm — and sells some of its high-end coolers and tumblers at Ace Hardware. One Yeti product available at Ace is the Hopper Flip 8 soft-sided cooler, which comes in your choice of charcoal grey or two shades of blue for an even $200. While that might seem like a lot for what is essentially a lunch bag, this cooler has a high-density closed cell foam core to keep your food and drinks cold for hours.

The waterproof and puncture-resistant outer shell is held closed by a water-resistant zipper, and the carry handle and detachable shoulder strap make toting your food and beverages a breeze. It has an average rating of 4.6/5 from more than 9,000 Ace buyers, with the overwhelming majority giving it a perfect 5/5. One such buyer wrote that “this cooler is a beast and got beat up badly and STILL held all of our contents and kept it cold! Sad to have to be buying a new one, but happy to know that it is money well spent.” 

An Outdoor Crunch review of this cooler and its 12-quart sibling found them to have “portability, packability, and seriously tough durability.” Home Depot doesn’t sell Yeti brand coolers; you can buy a variety of less expensive soft-sided coolers there but you won’t get Yeti quality or the three-year warranty offered with the Hopper cooler. 

To select items to recommend to our readers we first considered  our own first-hand experience and browsed the Ace Hardware website to identify other likely candidates for inclusion. We chose items that would appeal to a large number of people and sought out ones with particularly high customer feedback scores and favorable professional reviews. 

Several items were dropped from consideration because pricing was the same at Ace and Home Depot or unavailable at one or the other at the time of writing, and the final list was chosen based on the difference in cost and quality between what we found at the two retailers. Ultimately more than a dozen items were considered before cutting the list down to the best Ace Hardware values.