Corded or cordless: where a cord still wins

Cordless has won the yard almost completely, and this site is largely about that. But two jobs are still genuinely better on a cable, and the reason is not power. It is a specification that nobody prints: duty cycle.

The short answer

Duty cycle is the hidden variable

Battery tools are excellent at intermittent work. You squeeze a trimmer trigger, release it, reposition, squeeze again. A pressure washer pump, by contrast, runs more or less continuously for as long as you are cleaning, and a dethatcher spins a 27-tine cylinder for every foot of a 12.6 inch pass across a whole lawn.

Those are the two jobs in our registry where the session is long enough that a pack becomes the limiting factor rather than an enabling one.

Pressure washing: the closest call

This one is genuinely arguable, and it is arguable in an unexpected direction. The cordless machine is the more powerful one.

Notice the Eco-mode row. At 2200 PSI and 1.0 GPM the cordless machine is producing 2,200 cleaning units, within 10% of the corded machine at full output. Detuned to save battery, the cordless washer is about as capable as the corded one flat out.

Which makes the decision almost purely geographic: if the job is inside about 55 feet of a socket, take unlimited runtime. If it is not, take the battery. The full head-to-head is in corded vs cordless pressure washer.

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Dethatching: not really a call at all

The Sun Joe AJ801E is a 12 A corded machine with a 12.6 inch working width, two swappable cylinders, five published depth settings and an 8 gallon collection bag. It works the top 0.4 inches of the lawn — it is a dethatcher and scarifier, not an aerator, and the depth figures make that unambiguous.

What makes it a sensible corded tool is the combination of a narrow working width and a whole-lawn job. Nearly 80 passes on a modest lawn is a session measured in hours, at a steady draw, on ground that is by definition close to the house. There is nothing a pack adds to that except an interruption.

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Where cordless has already won

A three-question test

1. Is the work continuous for more than about half an hour? If yes, a cord is worth considering. If it is stop-start, it is not.
2. Does the job stay within about 55 feet of a socket? If not, the question is settled and the answer is cordless.
3. Is there a spinning blade or chain involved? If yes, cordless, regardless of the other two answers.

Two yes answers and a no to the third is the corded case. In a typical yard that describes the pressure washer and the dethatcher, and that is genuinely the whole list.

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What we cannot tell you

We have not run any of these tools. Nobody publishes a duty-cycle rating, a continuous-operation limit or a thermal derating figure for any of them, so the argument above is built on published runtimes and working widths rather than on measurements we made.

What the published figures do settle is the shape of it: a corded machine has no runtime figure because it does not need one, and a cordless machine has no radius limit because it does not have one. Match those two facts to your job.