Walk far enough down the Ryobi ONE+ aisle and the tools stop making obvious sense. Past the drills, drivers, and saws sits a shelf of flat-out strange gear that all runs on the same 18V battery. I own more than 20 ONE+ tools, and one of the weirdest is also one I'd never give up: a 150-watt power inverter that turns a tool battery into a wall outlet.
Ryobi keeps building oddities like it, some gimmicky, some secretly great. These five are the bizarre ones worth the shelf space, starting with the inverter that lives on my bench.
A tool battery that doubles as a wall outlet
18V ONE+ 150-watt power source
Credit: Jonathon Jachura / MUO
Credit: Jonathon Jachura / MUO
Credit: Jonathon Jachura / MUO
Credit: Jonathon Jachura / MUO
Credit: Jonathon Jachura / MUO
The first time you clip a drill battery onto a box with a three-prong outlet on the front, it looks like a mistake. It isn't. Any ONE+ pack works with the Ryobi ONE+ Battery Inverter Power Source. Attach a battery, and the 150-watt unit gives you a live 120V outlet and two USB ports, running off the same battery I use in my impact driver. It's a modified sine wave capped at 150 watts. You can power laptops, phones, and small electronics.
I keep all my batteries charged for storms. Lose power at the house and just one 4.0Ah pack on this inverter will keep phones alive for days. Go bigger on the battery and you get more. Out on the patio, it spares me from running a cord through the door just to plug in a fan or a laptop. A dedicated power bank does the same job for a lot more money and comes with yet another charger to store. This one just runs on batteries I already own.
A shop vac that hides in a 5-gallon bucket
18V ONE+ bucket top wet/dry vacuum
Most shop vacs are bulky drums that hog garage space all year. Ryobi's version skips the drum completely. Its bucket top vac is just a motor and a lid. Set it on any standard 5-gallon bucket and you're vacuuming a minute later. You get 45 CFM of airflow and 32 inches of water lift, which handles sawdust, drywall dust, and the occasional wet spill. It weighs about 4 pounds.
The 4-foot hose and crevice tool clip onto the housing, and a blower port flips it from suck to blow. Finish the job, lift the lid, dump the bucket, and stack it flat until next time. At roughly $60 for the bare tool, it's one of the cheapest ways into a cordless vac once you already own ONE+ batteries.
A 7-foot light tower that looks like a railgun
18V ONE+ TriPower tripod LED light
Ryobi's brightest light doesn't clip to your belt or sit on a shelf. The ONE+ Cordless LED Tripod Light stands 7 feet tall on folding tripod legs and throws 3,800 lumens from a head with four pivoting panels. Those panels aim on their own, so you can flood an entire garage or focus one beam on the spot in front of you. The head pops off and runs solo with a battery clipped in, which keeps it useful after the legs fold away.
The clever part is power. This was Ryobi's first TriPower product, so it accepts an 18V ONE+ battery, a 40V yard battery, or a plain extension cord for unlimited runtime. That range pays off if you own both Ryobi platforms and don't want to check which pack is charged. It lists around $200, steep for a work light, but few lights this bright fold into a bag this easily.
A cordless soldering iron with nothing to trip over
18V ONE+ 120-watt soldering iron
A soldering iron is the last thing you'd expect to run on a drill battery, until you need one somewhere with no outlet nearby. Ryobi's ONE+ iron reaches working heat in under 90 seconds and holds a set temperature between 400°F and 900°F on a dial, covering delicate electronics up through heavier automotive work.
A 3-foot cord between the battery base and the tip gives you room to move, and an onboard holder parks the hot iron safely between joints. For car and trailer wiring, RV fixes, or any repair where an extension cord won't reach, cordless soldering solves a real headache. It runs about $69 as a bare tool. That's more than a basic corded iron, but the extra buys you the freedom to solder in a driveway, a boat, or a crawlspace.
A bug zapper that runs off your drill battery
18V ONE+ bug zapper
This is the one that gets a laugh in the store, then makes sense by the second mosquito. Ryobi's ONE+ bug zapper covers up to 1.5 acres and runs on the same packs as everything else, so there's no outlet to find and no cord stretched across the lawn. UV light pulls bugs into an electric mesh charged to 2,550 volts, and a removable tray collects the aftermath for a quick empty.
It moonlights as a lantern too, with an LED panel set to three brightness levels for a campsite or a picnic table. Cordless is the entire point. Hang it off a branch at camp, sit it on a tailgate, walk it around the patio. Nothing tethers it to the house. The bare tool is about $100, a price that only makes sense when the battery is already in your garage.
Why the weird ones are worth a look
None of these tools would be worth much as standalone gadgets. The battery you already own is what changes the math. Once the pricey part is covered, adding a bucket vac, a light tower, or a bug zapper stops feeling like a real purchase and turns into a $60–$100 impulse.
The inverter is the oddball I actually keep on my bench, but I wouldn't hesitate on any of the other four. Next time you're at Home Depot for drill bits, take the long way through the ONE+ aisle. The strangest shelf is where the platform quietly earns its keep.