Harbor Freight Icon 382-Piece Master Set: What's Included & How Much Does It Cost?

One of the great things about shopping at Harbor Freight is the range in value and quality of the products they offer. Most of the tools that you find inside these stores are going to be cheaper than the big-name brands. For example, Harbor Freight often compares Bauer power tools to Craftsman and Ryobi. However, the company also offers alternatives for the premium brands that are designed to be sturdier than the budget-oriented brands on the shelf next to them. Icon hand tools is a prominent example of this.

Icon tools are often marketed as an alternative to Snap-On – a professional-grade tool truck company that is favored by industry professionals across the U.S. Whether or not it actually meets this level of quality is a matter of opinion, but the Icon brand tools are certainly among the best that Harbor Freight sells. This makes them a popular option for handypeople looking to balance quality and budget. Harbor Freight's lifetime warranty for hand tools doesn't hurt matters either.

Knowing that, many people might be tempted by the Icon Core Master Set. This includes a collection of 382 pieces of Icon hardware that is sure to make a solid start to anyone's tool collection. But before you go rushing off to the store, you might first want to know what comes in the kit and how much it costs.

There are 382 products in the Icon Core Master Set. The kit is mainly comprised of hand tools along with a small light, which is the only electrically powered device in the set. The kit contains six low-profile 90-tooth gear ratchets that each have a 4 degree arc swing, a 1.5-inch breaker bar, 205 sockets, including shallow, deep, hex, TORX, and triple-square models — each available in 1/4-inch, 3/8-inch, and 1/2-inch drive sizes — 12 socket extensions, and seven socket adapters. 

Furthermore, it includes seven sets of pliers made of forged alloy steel, 17 reversible ratcheting wrenches with anti-slip grips, and 28 combination wrenches with anti-slip open ends. There are also eight standard screwdrivers, four mini screwdrivers, and four mini TORX screwdrivers. You get 26 L-shaped hex keys with ball ends, two ball peen dead blow hammers with vibration-isolating grips, 10 S2 steel punch and chisels, a locking flex-head ratchet with 32 bits, an extension, and an adapter. Finally, you also get a rechargeable 800-lumen LED foldable bar work light with a magnetic base, a four-piece pick and hook set, four scrapers, and a pair of Ranger safety glasses.

As you can see, most of the items look to be primarily aimed at automotive work — though, there will certainly be some crossover with appliance repair and other home maintenance tasks. This makes it a solid starting set for a burgeoning mechanic, a new homeowner, or someone who's simply looking to upgrade their existing setup.

Icon tends to be much more affordable than most of the brands that it competes with, but you can still expect to spend a pretty penny for a kit this size. The Icon Core Master Set has an MSRP of $1,300. That can be a hard pill to swallow, but it's pretty reasonable when you consider all that the set gives you and the cost of alternatives.

You might be tempted to purchase the tools as you need them in order to reduce the shock of that initial cost. That's a valid tactic, but Harbor Freight claims that you would save over $1,000 when buying this set instead of purchasing the tools individually, which would price around $2,318. Then there's the matter of how much a kit would cost from a different manufacturer. The company states that the Icon 382-Piece Master Set is comparable to the SNAP-ON 9200AGSO US Set 2. This set is certainly similar — though, there are some differences in the included tools. But the Snap-On set goes for a whopping $8,230, making it more than three times the cost of the Icon version.