The magazine slides opens and closes easily and there is a viewing port so you can see when you are running low on staples. Probably should have looked a bit closer at the staple size, which is too small to be effective for what I wanted – my mistake! The tab that has to be depressed to make the gun fire is a safety feature but also serves as a neat guide for placing the staple very accurately when necessary. Few projects require more than 400 staples – the quoted battery life – so as long as you pop it on charge when you’ve finished, it should always be up to the task. I upholstered 4 kitchen chairs in no time with no aching hands like I had previously experienced with my old hand staple gun.

Like most of the items in the Bosch DIY range (that’s the green kit, not the professional blue kit), this tacker feels sturdy and there are plenty of sweet additional touches.

I used the tacker with the 8mm staples to fix the netting to the fence posts and thought that it might last a couple of months before requiring attention, but the netting has now been in place for two years! Especially practical: Thanks to the ergonomic softgrip zone, the PTK 3,6 LI is always comfortable to hold, even after long periods of use. This product carries a full 3 year manufacturers warranty covering both faulty materials and faulty workmanship, it does not cover general wear and tear or damage, batteries, blades, bulbs and other consumables. I charged it between uses so can't say if it'll do 400 staples on one charge as claimed, but it didn't run flat at any time.

We managed to sink a few staples into the soft plasterboard at our office (sorry Mr Office Manager) and cover a cheap Ikea desk in some leather material, but we imagine it wouldn’t live up to more serious DIY jobs. The cordless, battery powered nature means that you don’t have to swap batteries out, yet Bosch reckons you can smash in over 400 staples before the built-in lithium-ion packs roll over and give up.Bosch measuring instruments - tools for professionals and DIY‘ers, which help to get flat surfaces, measure distances, angles and slopes, and to find hidden objects. This little Bosch however, is excellent, and sends the staples all the way home with great ease and no pain to my hands. As with cars though a bigger engine does not always translate to better performance so it is important to compare the specifications of tools at different voltages between different manufacturers. One tip: staples are fired further into surface if you apply a little pressure on the nose of the stapler as you pull the trigger.