The Gadget Agenda: Why a £24.99 Aldi tool bargain can actually cost you £55

We're a nation obsessed with DIY. And that's why we like to invest a fair chunk of our disposable income into DIY tools and gadgets.

From drills to depth gauges, and from leaf blowers to lawn mowers, it's a huge industry, and some of it seems impossibly affordable.

I was in Aldi the other day, eyeing up a portable leaf blower. I've been keen on owning one of these for a while with autumn on its way, and the £24.99 price seemed too good to be true. And it was.

The trouble is, the price you see for the power tool - and this goes for most retailers, not just Aldi - is for the bare unit itself. There's no battery included. And there's no charger either.

In Aldi's beguiling middle aisle, there's a battery and charger set tucked away that will cost you an additional £30. So the £25 leaf blower suddenly costs £55.

However, I hear you venture, if you buy more power tools from Aldi, such as a sander, a mini chainsaw, a cordless drill, and maybe a wallpaper stripper, you've already got the battery and charger for it, and you're spreading that cost out.

And that, dear reader, is how they get you. It's all a bit of commercial trickery. Buy a cheap tool from Aldi, stomach the cost of the battery and charger, and of course the next time you see a cheep angle grinder you've been promising yourself, you're going to buy it from Aldi, because you've already got the battery.

This is true of so many bits of tech now, especially DIY and garden tools. Before I got wise to this game, I'd been buying a few cordless gadgets and wondering why I'd got so many chargers and batteries kicking around.

I'm older and wiser (and resultingly poorer) now, so I've signed up to an allegiance. Pretty much all my kit now runs off Makita batteries.

Thankfully, it doesn't mean I need to buy Makita kit all the time. There's plenty of what I'll refer to as "Chinesium" out there that's compatible with the batteries, and even additional batteries can be bought off-brand for peanuts.

But it does mean I'm swallowed up by an ecosystem that's as ensnaring as an acre of quicksand. And if I want a compressor for the car, or a telescopic hedge trimmer, I know I've got to make sure it takes my batteries.

Buying cheaper Chinese tech does get you out of this entrapment to some extent, and it's surprising how decent some of it is, but it doesn't work for Aldi stuff and it won't work for Lidl stuff either.

I love Aldi's middle aisle, and I always make a beeline for the "middle of Lidl" when I'm out shopping - but I'll never be seduced by the tools.

As much as I love my DIY gadgets, I'm not being sucked in to yet another ecosystem.

So if you're reading this and you've yet to properly indulge yourself in a suite of new tools, or perhaps you've got a project looming that's going to require some new tech, by all means use Aldi. Or Lidl.

But be acutely aware that, once you've committed to that battery and charger, it'll be the last brand you can buy without investing again.

Gone are the days when we could mix and match our tech brands based on what we want each tool to do, and how well it actually performs. What a shame.