Hedge trimmers - battery vs petrol

paddylonglegs

plan on buying a hedge trimmer soon. Having some dewalt batteries, I thought it would be handy to get a battery powered, but not sure if they’re less powerful than petrol or not.

a significant amount of hedging to be done so want to be well tooled when it comes to this.

any advice appreciated.

rolling boh

I got a stihl petrol one and it's much more powerful than the battery one I had .If you have a lot of hedges it would proberly be the better option .Its heavier and a bit noisy which may be an issue if you live beside others I live out away from others a bit so it's OK for me .The one I have sounds a bit like a chainsaw just to give you an idea .It may depend on how much you want to spend maybe some high end ones are less noisy.I think I paid about 250 for mine but some are a couple of times that .

The Continental Op

I'd go with petrol because its what I'm used to using. Have had Stihl, Solo and Husqvarna all were good enough for a wide range of hedges. Have thought about battery ones but I don't have enough decent well looked after hedge to warrant yet another tool.

If I have well looked after hedges instead of mixed farm hedges I'd definitely consider getting a battery hedge trimmer but ONLY because I am already well bought into DeWalts XR system so already have a lot of their batteries. Making sure you will still be able to get batteries in say five years time would be part of my decision making process.

I'd still have both if I did get a battery tool because once you have used a hedge cutting on really rough work it tends to take the edge off them thats needed for finer work on decent hedges.

the_pen_turner

friend of mine has a small battery one. its great for the box hedge and one or 2 batteries does the whole hedge. but that very light cuts. he cuts it every week or 2 really fast and never has to take any real amount off, . he tried it on heavier headge and it ate batteries and really struggled with the heavier bits. .

i would go for petrol if it was me unless its really light work. a long reach hedge cutter would be great

paddylonglegs

Thank you for those responses, that has swayed me to the petrol version.

windowcills

A battery one is fine if you trim it regularily, they can jam a lot on woody branches,

a petrol one is epic, its very like holding a lightsaber, just push it into the hedge at the required height and start walking, watch the poor hedge collapse as you pass

paddylonglegs

Went ahead with the petrol one. Low budget on this so just went for a Titan brand from screw fix. Seemed to get good reviews, we’ll see. I’ll report back.