A cordless yard tool kit for a half acre

The kit guides on this site are organized by lot size, and until now they skipped from a quarter acre straight to an acre. The half acre is the gap, and it is not a halfway answer: it is the specific size at which a single battery stops being able to finish the lawn, which changes what you buy rather than just how much of it.

The short answer

The two numbers that size everything

Both come from manufacturers' own published figures rather than from us guessing. Greenworks rates its 320Wh flagship for half an acre and Kobalt rates its 640Wh machine for a full one, which is where the energy figure comes from; the time figure is geometry and one stated assumption.

The gap between 63 minutes and what anyone claims

This is the finding that makes a half acre its own page. Put every published runtime claim in our registry next to the 63 minutes the lawn needs, and none of the single-pack machines reaches it.

Read the last column and the kit decision makes itself. Either you buy a machine that ships two packs, or you buy a machine with the largest single pack and add a second one. The two-pack machines are the Ryobi and the Kobalt, and the arithmetic behind that choice is in how many batteries do you need.

We have built this kit the second way, on EGO, for one reason: 420 watt-hours is the largest single pack in our mower registry, so it is the configuration that comes closest to finishing in one go — and the same pack then runs every other tool below.

1. The mower, and the pack that goes with it

The EGO LM2135SP publishes a 21 inch deck, up to 7.0 ft-lbs of cutting torque, a 56V 7.5Ah pack (420 nameplate watt-hours), eight cut-height positions from 1 to 4 inches, self-propel from 0.9 to 3.1 MPH, three interchangeable lower blades for mulching, high-lift bagging and extended runtime, up to 60 minutes of claimed runtime and a 5-year tool warranty.

Three minutes short sounds like a rounding error and is not, because the 63 minutes is a clean-pass estimate. It excludes turns, trimming around obstacles and emptying a bag, all of which a half acre has more of than a quarter acre does.

The honest gaps: EGO publishes no weight for this mower, no charge time and no acreage rating — the 420Wh is the only figure doing any work here, and the acreage comparison above borrows Greenworks' rating to make it meaningful. The full spec review is in our EGO LM2135SP review, and the alternative at this size is argued in best mowers for a medium yard.

#ad Check the EGO Power+ 21" Select Cut LM2135SP price on Amazon — how we're funded.

2. The trimmer, which borrows the mower's battery

The EGO ST1521S publishes a 15 inch cutting swath, 0.095 inch dual-feed spiral twist line, a POWERLOAD head that winds line at the push of a button, a carbon fiber split shaft with a lifetime warranty, a 56V 2.5Ah kit pack (140 nameplate watt-hours), up to 30 minutes of runtime and a 50 minute recharge.

Thirty minutes is a modest claim, and at a half acre there is more edge to cut than at a quarter. This is where buying the spare mower pack pays twice.

The split shaft is the other reason this trimmer and not a cheaper one: it takes EGO's edger and pole saw heads, so the next two tools are attachments rather than motors. That route is covered in multi-head attachment systems.

The honest gap: EGO publishes no weight for this configuration, which matters on a tool held at arm's length. The one published weight in the category is Ryobi's 12.9 lb with a 6.0Ah pack fitted — the two are compared in EGO ST1521S vs Ryobi RY402110.

#ad Check the EGO Power+ 15" POWERLOAD Carbon Fiber ST1521S price on Amazon — how we're funded.

3. The blower, sized up from the small-lot answer

A half acre usually means more hard surface: a longer drive, more path, a patio. The EGO LB7650 publishes 765 CFM at peak, a variable range from 260 to 580 CFM, up to 200 MPH, 64 dB, 4.6 lb without a battery, and — unusually — both ends of its runtime: 15 minutes on turbo and 150 minutes on low from a 5.0Ah pack.

Publishing both ends is the reason it is here rather than the 650 CFM model we recommend on smaller lots. On a half acre you will spend real time on the trigger, and a figure of 15 minutes is one you can plan around in a way that an averaged claim is not.

The honest gaps: EGO publishes no ingress rating for this model where it publishes IPX4 for the smaller one, and most listings sell it bare — which on this kit is an advantage, because you already own the packs. The two EGO blowers are compared directly in EGO LB7650 vs LB6504.

#ad Check the EGO Power+ 765 CFM Blower LB7650 price on Amazon — how we're funded.

The kit, and what each figure is sized against

The order to buy in

1. Measure the grass, not the lot. A half-acre lot is 21,780 square feet of land, and the house, drive, beds and patio come out of it. The method is in how to measure your lawn.
2. Buy the mower in its largest pack configuration. At this size the pack is the purchase and the deck is the accessory.
3. Buy the spare pack before the second tool. This is the step that separates a half-acre kit from a quarter-acre one, and it is the one people skip.
4. Add the trimmer, then the blower, on the same platform.
5. Only then consider attachments — an edger or pole saw head on the trimmer's split shaft is the cheapest expansion left.

What a half acre does not need

• A riding mower. About an hour of walking is a long session, not an unreasonable one, and a rider needs roughly 1,120 to 1,344 watt-hours per acre plus somewhere to live. The line sits closer to an acre — see the acre kit and acres per charge.
• A robot mower, in most cases. The largest working area any robot in our registry publishes is 0.9 acre and the common one is half that — robot mowers for one acre covers where the ratings actually land.
• A third battery. Two 7.5Ah packs is 840Wh against a 320Wh job. Buy the third one when you have run out twice, not before.
• A backpack blower. 765 CFM handheld already exceeds what a half acre of hard surface asks for.

The smaller version of this kit is the quarter-acre kit, the larger one is the acre kit, and the general buying order for a first-time buyer is in your first cordless yard kit.

What we cannot tell you

We have not run this kit across a season. The 63 minute figure rests on our own 2.5 MPH walking assumption, because no manufacturer publishes a pace; at 3 MPH the same lawn fits inside EGO's claim, which is exactly why we state the assumption rather than bury it. The 640Wh-per-acre figure comes from two manufacturers' acreage ratings rather than a measurement, and neither states the grass conditions behind it. EGO publishes no weight for the mower or the trimmer, no charge time for the mower, and no acreage rating at all — the acreage comparison on this page borrows Greenworks' rating to give EGO's watt-hours a scale. And nobody publishes how any of these runtimes degrade as packs age, which is the figure that decides what this kit is like in year five.