Best battery powered gardening tools range

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sidefx

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#300863 10-Oct-2022 09:11

Looking for opinions on the best battery powered gardening tools range; Stihl seems to be the gold standard but are the other well known brands almost as good? (makita looks decent? Anybody have experience with EGO?)

Specifically looking at pole hedge trimmers at the moment but at some point line trimmer + possibly a small pruner\chainsaw and perhaps a couple of other things, so looking at the ranges with swappable batteries.

Basically interested in your experiences with any you have used long(ish) term; i.e. performance, battery life, batter longevity, etc in the real world.

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#2979933 10-Oct-2022 09:51

My brother & I went exploring this weekend past for a hedge & line trimmer & settled on Ego, despite it being overkill for our needs.

We felt that the Ego hedge trimmer was the least awkward to handle & had a better head locking/rotating mechanism.

It'll be interesting to see if our opinion changes once we've actually had a chance to use them

Senecio

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#2979958 10-Oct-2022 11:17

I’m all in on the EGO platform. Mower, trimmer, blower and chainsaw. Love it. It just works and I never have to worry about filling a petrol tank or topping up oil. Just put the batteries on the charger on a Friday night and I have everything I need for the weekend.

The mower, trimmer and blower I bought just over 5yrs ago and they’ve never missed a beat. Only the smaller 1.5Ah battery that came with the blower is starting to show signs of fatigue. My larger batteries are still operating at almost full capacity. I bought the chainsaw about 2yrs ago and it’s perfect for the small tidy up jobs I need.

Can’t speak highly enough of the EGO range.

CYaBro

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#2979972 10-Oct-2022 11:33

We have Ego stuff and it works great.

We have the skin with line trimmer, brush cutter, hedge trimmer and pole saw attachments.
Also have the chainsaw.

Looking at getting a lawn mower at some stage. (Maybe the new ride-on they do, if it comes to NZ!)
The batteries (2x 2.5Ah) get charged on the solar system I installed in the shed so cost us nothing to run, except for the odd chain, chain bar lube and line trimmer cable stuff. :)

Opinions are my own and not the views of my employer.

tigercorp

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#2980075 10-Oct-2022 12:39

We've got the Ego lawnmower, line trimmer, hedge trimmer and backpack blower. Recommend all of them.

We've also have the Ozito pole with the hedge trimmer and pruner/chainsaw attachments. These are surprisingly good, I've done a huge amount of work with the pruner attachment. The hedge trimmer attachment was so good I bought the 2 x 18v Ozito (non-pole) hedge trimmer thinking it would be amazing, but that seriously sucked so I took it back and got the Ego.

Also have the Ozito 2 x 18v chainsaw which is also fine for the backyard.

Basically, the Ego kit feels good in hand and performs great.

The Ozito pole pruner/hedge trimmer feels cheap but performs great.

The Ozito chainsaw feels cheap and performs fine.

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#2980076 10-Oct-2022 12:43

We have ego mower, line trimmer and hedge trimmer. All powerful, effective and easy to use tools. About 3 years old and reliable so far.

Mike

johno1234

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#2980138 10-Oct-2022 13:12

tigercorp:

We've got the Ego lawnmower, line trimmer, hedge trimmer and backpack blower. Recommend all of them.

We've also have the Ozito pole with the hedge trimmer and pruner/chainsaw attachments. These are surprisingly good, I've done a huge amount of work with the pruner attachment. The hedge trimmer attachment was so good I bought the 2 x 18v Ozito (non-pole) hedge trimmer thinking it would be amazing, but that seriously sucked so I took it back and got the Ego.

Also have the Ozito 2 x 18v chainsaw which is also fine for the backyard.

Basically, the Ego kit feels good in hand and performs great.

The Ozito pole pruner/hedge trimmer feels cheap but performs great.

The Ozito chainsaw feels cheap and performs fine.

Now I'm in a quandary - thought I needed to get the EGO multitool skin with hedge trimmer and pruning saw attachments - about $1200... but if they are OK I can get away with the Ozito PXC equivalent for about $300! I already have some PXC stuff - blower-vac, drill, impact driver and 4Ah batteries.

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neb

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#2980151 10-Oct-2022 13:43

johno1234:
Now I'm in a quandary - thought I needed to get the EGO multitool skin with hedge trimmer and pruning saw attachments - about $1200... but if they are OK I can get away with the Ozito PXC equivalent for about $300! I already have some PXC stuff - blower-vac, drill, impact driver and 4Ah batteries.

Ozito are plenty decent for the price, and given the (relatively) cheap cost of the skins it's quite easy to buy more and more of those when you've already got batteries and chargers. When I got my line trimmer during the big lockdown (since the lawn guy couldn't come round and things were getting a bit scruffy) it was pretty much a no-brainer, I already had the charger and batteries and just needed the skin to clip onto them.

gehenna

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#2980152 10-Oct-2022 13:45

I have Ego lawn mower and line trimmer, and a range of larger capacity and smaller capacty batteries/chargers. I originally got the line trimmer as it was the highest rated on Consumer. I've never had an issue with power from any of them, they are super powerful devices regardless of the battery capacity, that'll just dictate how long you can work for at once. The battery in the box for the trimmer is one of the smaller ones, I would get about 30 min of hard work out of it, longer if it's just edges etc. The lawn mower is also fantastic.

sidefx

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#2980162 10-Oct-2022 14:12

Thank you all! I'm definitely leaning towards the EGO range now. I see mitre 10 has "multi packs" which have a bunch of the things I was thinking of getting long term so might consider just getting one of those from the get go.

I hadn't really considered the mower as I have a petrol one that works well (and our lawns are a bit wild so felt like I needed the power of the petrol one) but if the petrol one gives up good to know their mowers are decent!

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tigercorp

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#2980165 10-Oct-2022 14:39

johno1234:

Now I'm in a quandary - thought I needed to get the EGO multitool skin with hedge trimmer and pruning saw attachments - about $1200... but if they are OK I can get away with the Ozito PXC equivalent for about $300! I already have some PXC stuff - blower-vac, drill, impact driver and 4Ah batteries.

You should make sure the tool ergonomics suit the use case.

For example, my boundary hedge is fairly small, about 12m in length, 1.5m high but it has a lot of thick stems. The pole hedge trimmer cuts it fine but its super tiring to work with as the weight is very far away where you hold it (and I'm in fairly decent shape). This is why I ended up getting the normal hedge trimmer. The pole trimmer is great though for keeping the high tree foliage under control.

If you're only doing occasional high work then your arms will thank you for the smaller tool.

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#2980191 10-Oct-2022 16:09

All of our stuff is Ryobi, mostly because I needed a cordless drill and they were the first ones out with the swappable batteries across a range of tools at the time.

I have

Drill

Impact driver

Leaf Blower (its lighter than the Mains one so my wife can use it with her damaged wrists)

Hedge Trimmer

Line Trimmer

Pole Saw

Brad Nail gun

Hammer drill (that takes chisels etc , great for lifting floor tiles !))

Couple of Palm sanders

Multitool (SOOOOOOO much better than the cheap mains powered Ozito I got)

And I will look at the Drop saw and skill saw, probably a lawn mower, LED work light...

All this enables me to work at the kids houses etc without the need for extension cables.

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tweake

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#2980304 10-Oct-2022 17:55

sidefx:

Looking for opinions on the best battery powered gardening tools range; Stihl seems to be the gold standard but are the other well known brands almost as good? (makita looks decent? Anybody have experience with EGO?)

Specifically looking at pole hedge trimmers at the moment but at some point line trimmer + possibly a small pruner\chainsaw and perhaps a couple of other things, so looking at the ranges with swappable batteries.

Basically interested in your experiences with any you have used long(ish) term; i.e. performance, battery life, batter longevity, etc in the real world.

i think you really need to consider the whole tool range. otherwise you end up spending a lot on batteries that only works on a few tools.

also need to consider what range. eg 18volt range, 40volt, 56 volt etc. if you really want serious outdoor tools then look at the 40volt and above.

i have the makita chainsaw 18volt dual batt. its the thinnist chainsaw blade i've ever seen. but it works perfectly well for pruning anything in the garden. but really i got it due to the free batteries they where giving away, so i got an extra pair of batteries which helps with the other tools.

gehenna

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#2980402 10-Oct-2022 20:25

I think there's an argument for having different makes for different needs. i.e. it's not like I'm going to put my 56v Ego battery into a cordless drill, so I can see a place for the more outdoors big equipment/tools being one type, and hand held powertools being another.

tweake

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#2980404 10-Oct-2022 20:37

gehenna:

I think there's an argument for having different makes for different needs. i.e. it's not like I'm going to put my 56v Ego battery into a cordless drill, so I can see a place for the more outdoors big equipment/tools being one type, and hand held powertools being another.

yes, for the really big ones.

but you can get 40v drills and 40v lawnmowers. but mostly its the 18v range where one battery type i think is best. its just a pain having a 56v lawnmower, a 40v hedge trimmer, 36v chainsaw, 18v drill and 12v screwdriver.

johno1234

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#2980448 11-Oct-2022 06:48

For a grunty 52cm self propelled mower I think the only available electric options are EGO and Makita. The Makita runs on two 18v batteries of up to 6.0Ah. The EGO runs on a single 56v battery of up to 10Ah. That made the EGO the single option for me a it seemed impossible for the Makita to match it

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