If you spend any time tinkering with or detailing vehicles just a couple of feet off the ground, a rolling stool is a garage essential. And if you sometimes need to get under a car, a creeper can be critical too. This Ryobi 18V dual-function creeper/seat can transform between both, and has a few other helpful features as well.
This thing’s full name is the Ryobi 18V ONE+ Dual Function Lighted Creeper/Seat, and the model is PCL692B. You can buy it at The Home Depot for $159.00, and it comes with a three-year warranty.
It’s a rolling creeper you can slide around on your back on, but when you pull a lever, it splits upward and converts into a stool. Plug a sold-separately Ryobi battery into the back and you can use two little flexi-arm lamps to illuminate your work area. There’s also a parts tray.
Ryobi is sold exclusively at The Home Depot, but it is not really the retailer’s “house brand.” It’s actually owned by Techtronic Industries (TTI), which is also the parent company of Milwaukee, Hart, AEG, and a handful of other tool and home maintenance brands.
Running a signature highlighter green color, Ryobi is designed for homeowner and hobbyist-level work. I would not recommend it for daily commercial-grade abuse, but as a lower-cost option for around-the-house tinkering and repairs, it’s fine. This feature-rich creeper is an interesting in-betweener, because it’s much more money than a basic creeper, but still far cheaper than something similar from a fancier brand.
Very Easy.
This creeper/seat comes with paper instructions and a QR code claiming to link to an assembly video. Unfortunately, that didn’t work—it just took me to the product page. But you won’t be annoyed by this for long, because even without a guide, the assembly is pretty much pet-money level work. All you need to do is tighten six caster wheels and insert six pins at the hinge points.
Once you’ve got it together, well, you know how to roll around on a stool, right? The only other function to understand is the pair of lights on bendy mounts—just point them where you want light and hit the button.
Well-equipped.
In just one Sunday of driveway wrenching, I learned to appreciate the versatility of this thing. I was doing brakes on my Polaris Ranger while my brother-in-law did brakes on his Bimmer, and we both made use of the Ryobi as a creeper and a seat.
I ended up using the parts tray to hold my phone, which was handy because it’s always falling out of my pocket when I’m climbing around cars. The pointable lights, which I initially thought looked silly, turned out to be quite helpful. Unlike a magnetic worklight, you can put these anywhere—I rolled the creeper under the BMW and shined a light up at my BIL’s work area with great results.
The only annoying thing about them is that they sag a little after being positioned. But brightness is great—even on a sunny day, they helped light up the dark corners of vehicle undersides.
You can also focus the lights between a spot and wider spot beam, which is pretty cool.
This device is also compatible with Ryobi’s Link system (where you can attach trays for parts and things).
Fine.
There are no glaringly ugly welds or connection points; in fact the seams are all pretty clean. The plastic all feels reasonably robust without weird gaps, and the caster wheels spin and roll nicely. The lever that lets you raise the stool from the creeper is a little inelegant, as are the staples holding the cover on the seat pads. The bendy arms that the lights are mounted on don’t stay in position as nicely as I’d like them to. The attachable parts tray is very dinky and can fall off.
Great.
The flip-up pad that you’d use to support your head in creeper mode is also handy when it’s right behind your butt. That little extra bit of backside comfort really went a long way; my old stool is just flat-bottomed. The tall caster wheels make it really easy to scoot around on this thing, even over rougher pavement.
Your body does tend to get in the way of the lights a little more when this thing’s in stool mode, but you can still get utility out of them. The plastic area near the carry handle also has holsters for tools, like sockets and pliers, which is also pretty nice.
Good.
You need to lift a car quite high to get this thing to fit under a car—that’s my only real complaint about its viability as a creeper. The headlamps are incredibly helpful in this mode; you can adjust them from spot to flood beams (relatively speaking) and light up your whole under-car work area rather nicely.
But I personally still don’t like creepers in general—I find them too bulky for quickly swinging in and out from under something. I’d still rather use something super-thin like the Husky Liners Garage Mat.
And while I liked the wheels for how smoothly they rolled, they also picked up debris quite quickly. If you’re lucky enough to have a glass-smooth concrete floor, must be nice, and you won’t have this problem. For the rest of us working in old houses and driveways, beware of rocks and tree bits.
Mid.
If you live anywhere besides a big city, you can probably score a creeper at a yard sale for like $10 on any given summer weekend. If your grandpa’s still alive, ask if you can have his old one. If you want a new convertible one with a stool mode, even those can be found for under $50 on Amazon.
So, at $160 plus tax, it feels like you’re paying a pretty big premium here for the lights. However—there is also the general niceness factor, which is tough to articulate, but I’ll do my best. A $40 creeper/stool will perform the same function, but the form factor on this is considerably nicer than a bottom-end one.
You also get a nice three-year warranty and the convenience of The Home Depot’s customer service desk—if this thing breaks on you at 6 p.m. on a Sunday, you can probably whip over to your local HD and get it swapped out with the receipt.
Decent.
Broadly speaking, I like this thing. Personally, I think I’d rather buy a nice stool with a backrest. But if you like the idea of a convertible stool-and-creeper in one, give this thing a look.
Headlights turned out to be surprisingly useful on a stool, and it’s quite comfortable to sit or lie down on. Touchpoint quality was fine. You can get a basic stool/creeper combo for far less money, but even at full list price, this still isn’t all that expensive. If you’re already in the Ryobi battery ecosystem, it’s not a bad pick-up.
It would also make a good gift for somebody who likes to casually tinker, especially if they have other Ryobi tools in their arsenal (for battery compatibility). Because it’s nice to have, and the lights are fun, but all the DIY’ers I know are cheapskates and would hesitate to buy anything for themselves that only serves comfort purposes.
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Automotive journalist since 2013, Andrew primarily coordinates features, sponsored content, and multi-departmental initiatives at The Drive.
