EGO ST1500E-F review
Test score
Key features
- Cordless electric
- Heavy duty
verdict: A great option for cutting long grass and weeds
This cordless grass trimmer is excellent at cutting down long grass and weeds, but also feels well balanced and easy to use. It has the power of a heavy-duty petrol grass trimmer, but with the advantage that it’s less noisy, vibrates far less and is much easier to start.
- Well balanced and feels comfortable to use
- Even for longer periods
- Removing and replacing the line cover can be tricky
Stihl FS94 C-E review
Test score
Key features
- Petrol
- Heavy duty
verdict: Great for tough weeds
This is a great petrol grass trimmer and the brush cutter head is extremely effective, too. It’s comfortable to use and deals with tough jobs, such as heavy weeds, and long grass easily. The bump feed on the grass trimmer head works well so you won’t lose your line. It’s pricey but should last you a long time.
- Powerful
- Comfortable to use
- Expensive
Black & Decker STC5433PC-GB review
Test score
Key features
- Cordless electric
- General purpose
verdict: A powerful strimmer for larger gardens
This cordless strimmer is a combination of a powerful strimmer that is excellent at cutting long grass and weeds, but can still make a decent job of the more delicate task of edging your lawn, so we’ve classed it as a general-purpose strimmer. It’s expensive at £238 and will not suit all gardeners as it can be a little awkward to use, but it’s worth considering if want a versatile machine.
- Powerful and adaptable
- Expensive
- Can be tricky to use
Honda HHT36AXBEUE review
Test score
Key features
- Cordless electric
- Heavy duty
verdict: Heavy but effective
This trimmer put in a great performance on every type of grass we tested it on. Its size and weight would pose a problem for less physically able users though, so it just misses out on being a Best Buy.
- Strong performance on all grass types
- Good battery life
- Comfortable handles
- Heavy
- Vibrates a lot
EGO ST1510E review
Test score
Key features
- Cordless electric
- Heavy duty
verdict: Powerful, competent trimming
This grass trimmer is easy to set up and use and, most importantly, cuts grass smoothly and neatly. It slightly struggles on vertical cuts, as the head doesn’t rotate, and the line feed is tricky, so it’s not quite a Best Buy. However, it’s surprisingly easy and comfortable to use for such a powerful trimmer.
- Excellent at cutting longer and thicker grass
- Easy to set up
- Comfortable to use
- Not the best at lawn edging
- Awkward to replace line
- Not much battery life
Stihl FS40 review
Test score
Key features
- Petrol
- Heavy duty
verdict: Great all-round petrol grass trimmer
The two powerful lines on this Best Buy petrol grass trimmer slice easily through long and rough grass. Overall, it’s a powerful machine, ideal for taming a wilderness.
- Excellent at cutting long grass
- Easy to use
- Well balanced
- Like all petrol grass trimmers
- It’s heavy
- The shaft isn’t adjustable
Honda UMS425LE review
Test score
Key features
- Petrol
- Heavy duty
verdict: Powerful grass trimmer for long grass
This petrol grass trimmer charged through our tests for cutting long grass and weeds but, as you might expect from a grass trimmer this powerful, it struggled with the more precise jobs of cutting lawn edges.
- Excellent for cutting through rough vegetation and long grass
- Expensive
- Heavy
- Doesn’t come with a harness and too powerful for neat edging
Stihl FSA 60R review
Test score
Key features
- Cordless electric
- General purpose
verdict: Powerful and easy to use
It’s another well-deserved Best Buy for Stihl. It combines power with usability to give you a trimmer that can quickly and neatly cut through any grass you try it on. Because of this, we can forgive the small issues, like its unsuitability for vertical lawn edging and the long time the battery takes to charge.
- Great results on most grass types
- Mostly easy and comfortable to use
- Quiet
- Tricky to cut vertically on lawn edges
- Awkward to replace the line
- Long charging time
EGO ST1401E-ST review
Test score
Key features
- Cordless electric
- General purpose
verdict: A feature-filled Best Buy
With excellent results on most types of grass and a user-friendly design, this cordless trimmer makes our Best Buy list. It’s not great at making vertical cuts on lawn edges and it’s on the heavy side, but if you can handle a weighty machine then it’s definitely worth buying.
Flymo 650E review
Test score
Key features
- Corded electric
- Lawn edger
verdict: Good at edging only
This is another decent Flymo grass trimmer and like the smaller Flymo Contour 550E is great for edging and deals with long and rough grass and weeds reasonably well. If you want a corded electric grass trimmer to use for occasional trimming for short amounts of time, it might be fine but the line-feed mechanism doesn’t work consistently and the trigger may make your hand ache if you’re using it for a longer amount of time.
- Makes edging easy
- Simple to use
- Automatic line-feed doesn’t work very well
- Switch makes your hand ache
Einhell Agillo 18/200 review
Test score
Key features
- Cordless electric
- Heavy duty
verdict: Powerful but prohibitively heavy for some
This trimmer comes close to Best Buy status, with excellent results cutting longer and thicker grass and neatening up along a fence. However, its huge weight and size makes it too clumsy to edge a lawn neatly, and means it’s exhausting to carry after a while.
- Good at trimming longer and thicker grass
- Great battery life
- Effective line feed
- Terrible at lawn edging
- Very heavy
Bosch Advanced GrassCut 36 review
Test score
Key features
- Cordless electric
- General purpose
verdict: Efficient for all tasks
This is a powerful cordless grass trimmer and it had no problems in any of our tests. It cut down long grass and weeds quickly and efficiently, but it also edged the lawn neatly. The battery lasted much longer in our tests than other cordless models too, though we had some issues with rethreading the double cutting line.
- Powerful yet easy-to-use grass trimmer
- Little heavy and the line is tricky to re-thread
Makita DUR189Z review
Test score
Key features
- Cordless electric
- General purpose
verdict: Surprisingly powerful
This 18V cordless grass trimmer is designed to cope quietly and effectively with a variety of jobs around the garden. The ATD (automatic torque drive) on this machine meant that it could deal particularly well with difficult grass conditions, even though it is powered by a relatively low-voltage battery. It was less good at edging, as the head doesn’t rotate, but it has a number of useful features.
- Adaptable and surprisingly powerful
- Light and easy to use
- Awkward to rethread new line
- Head doesn’t rotate for vertical cutting
Stihl FS 38 review
Test score
Key features
- Petrol
- Heavy duty
verdict:
This grass trimmer might be light for a petrol machine, but it’s impressively powerful and easily capable of tackling tough jobs in the wilder parts of the garden. However, while it’s good for heavy-duty use, the lighter tasks it’s apparently designed for aren’t the ones it seems best suited to.
- Starts easily
- Cuts long and rough grass very well
- Easy to respool the line
- Noticeable vibration
- Cutting head doesn’t rotate
- Too powerful at times
Stihl FSE 52 review
Test score
Key features
- Corded electric
- General purpose
verdict: Line-feed issues
This grass trimmer powers through gardening jobs, but it’s also easy to use, making it a great all-rounder. It’s let down by a poorly designed line feed though, so it doesn’t quite make the Best Buy grade.
- Strong performance
- Easy to use
- Rotating and angled head
- Cutting line hard to repair and replace
Flymo 500E review
Test score
Key features
- Corded electric
- Lawn edger
verdict: Inexpensive but unreliable line-feed
This is a good budget, corded electric machine. It’s easy to use with a lot of features that make edging simple. It’s not particularly powerful but it can deal reasonably well with long or rough grass and weeds. It’s let down by an unreliable line-feed system but for around £50, you might be able to live with it.
- Makes edging easy
- Simple to use
- Automatic line-feed doesn’t work very well
- Switch makes your hand ache
Mountfield Multi tool 5-in-1 MM2603 review
Test score
Key features
- Petrol
- Heavy duty
verdict: Great grass-trimming multi-tool
Overall, we’re pretty impressed with this petrol trimmer. It excels at the heavy-duty jobs it’s designed for, although it doesn’t do as well as a lawn edger. If you’re after a multi-tool, it’s definitely worth considering, but it’s not quite as good as a Best Buy.
- Excellent on most types of grass and vegetation
- Easy to fill and start the engine
- Not as good at lawn edging
- Heavy
- Very noisy
Stihl FSA 57 review
Test score
Key features
- Cordless electric
- General purpose
verdict: Decent all round
This Stihl trimmer ticks most of the boxes – it’s easy to use, quiet, has a great battery life and leaves all your grass neat and tidy. There are a couple of little niggles that means it misses being a Best Buy though.
- Great at cutting grass
- Good battery life
- Easy and comfortable to use
- Quiet
- No rotating head for lawn edging
- Awkward to replace line
Black & Decker GL7033 review
Test score
Key features
- Corded electric
- General purpose
verdict: Good overall, but poor lawn edging
This corded electric strimmer is able to handle most jobs and is comfortable to use. The heavy-duty line is a useful feature for cutting long grass and weeds, making it a great general-purpose grass trimmer.
- Good for long grass and weeds. Heavy-duty line works efficiently
- Not the best at edging the lawn
