The Hyde 6-in-1 doesn’t have the best features of our main pick, but it’s cheap, and you can still use it to open a can of paint, scrape, apply putty, and clean a large roller. Using the 17-in-1 as a screwdriver is really an “emergency only” option, so it needs to be functional and little else.

The Linzer has much of the same functionality as Hyde’s 17-in-1, but is missing the small roller cutout.The reason we liked the Hyde so much is that it’s the only painter’s tool that has a second, smaller semi-circular cut-out to clean paint from a small-diameter roller.

It doesn’t have the small roller cutout, the bottle opener, the nail puller, the screwdrivers, or the wrench cutouts, but it does have a stainless steel blade, the large roller cutout, the prying edge, the scraper edge, the gouging corner, and a metal cap for banging a paint lid on. How to open a paint can, a beer and your weekend to more time and honey-done projects with Hyde Tools’ 17-in-1 multi-tool.Also, knowing from personal experience how nice it can be to have a quick and dirty screwdriver on hand while prepping a room for paint, we keyed in on tools with that feature as well.