I bought one of these a couple of years ago, primarily for torquing lug nuts on my car. The racheting mechanism is very smooth, torque adjustment slightly less so, but it is very usable. The blow-molded case is a nice bonus also, aiding the careful handling such wrenches require. The only significant issue I have with build quality is that the wrench head is enclosed by a metal plate (the black plate in the photo) held in by machine screws. Said screws eventually loosened, and the wrench head fell apart, springs and pieces flying all over.

Fortunately, Harbor Freight offers their lifetime warranty on this tool (unlike most other brands, including Craftsman) so getting a replacement entailed nothing more than a quick trip to the store.

Only used to torque down lug nuts so far, and have noticed no ill effects.

Maybe we hit a bad batch. I don't know. I had read good things about these being resonably accurate. When they were on sale a buddy and I bought one each on the same day at the same store.

I don't have any fancy calibration equipment, but I had borrowed a 1/2" Craftsman torque wrench that had been calibrated several years prior (and carefully used and stored since). I also had my 3/8" drive Craftsman (20+ years old, stored in poor conditions and not always turned back to 0).

As a rough test/comparison, I wired together some weight plates to make exactly 50 lbs. as indicated by my digital bathroom scales. Using a socket and short extension, I put each wrench on a lug nut. Keeping the wrench handle as parallel to the ground as possible, I adjusted the wrench settings and moved the weight out until the wrench popped. I measured the distance from the center of the lug nut to the wire holding the weights and calculated. Here's what I got:

1/2" Craftsman set at 70 ft/lbs popped with the weight 16 3/16" out, which is about 67.4 ft/lbs. That's 3.7% low.

My 3/8" Craftsman: set at 62 ft/lbs popped at ~13 31/32", which comes out to
58.2 actual, about 6.1% low.

HF #1: set at 52 ft/lbs popped at 15 3/4", which is 68.3 actual. That's
31.1% high. Horrible.

HF #2: set at 52 ft/lbs popped at 15 5/32", which is about
63.2 actual. That's 21.5% too high. Ouch again.

I had previously done some other tests with these wrenches, including repeatedly tightening and loosening while marking the nut position at final torque. Both HF wrenches turned the nuts much farther than either Craftsman.

I took my HF wrench back and got a refund. IMO, don't trust these unless you have them tested or check them out yourself.

Best torque wrench $10 will buy. I wouldn't bet my life on it's accuracy but for a home mechanic it'll get you in the ballpark. Saw the exact same torque wrench at my autoparts store for $50. The selector switch is the oppsite of all my other ratchets and drive me nuts. Not a big deal but I seem to forget everytime I use it. Comes with a nice case too.

It was on sale for $10, plus I had a 20% discount coupon so it ended up costing $8. Eight bucks for a 1/2 inch torque wrench with a range from 20-150 ft lbs is insanely cheap. Of course, it's worthless if it doesn't work, so I tested it and torques several nuts and bolts through its torque range. Start at 20 and work your way up. Do several low torque tests to break the wrench in and get the internal lubrication working. It's accurate. Highly recommended.

First I got this for 10 bucks... That's at least half as much as the other cheapest. I gotta say mine occasionally skips if that makes sense. Like it would almost click but then just jump very big. It's not as smooth as the northerntools one I got. But the bottom line is it works well enough. I keep this in my car with my portable tools so that if I change a wheel or something, I can torque the lugnuts.

Going for 8 years now. I check calibration against a Craftsman beam-style torque wrench and pretty much right on (though probably not a very accurate test anyway).