A cordless yard tool kit for two acres

The kit guides on this site run from a small space up to an acre, and an acre is where walking stops being reasonable. Two acres is where it stops being possible: four and a quarter hours behind a 21 inch deck, against a published runtime ceiling of 80 minutes on the best walk-behind we hold. So this kit is built around a rider, and the rider decides the rest of it.

The short answer

The two numbers that size everything

Both come from published figures rather than from us guessing, and one of them is why the walk-behind conversation ends here.

252 minutes against 79 is the whole argument. Four and a quarter hours of walking, in three or four sessions because no walk-behind battery lasts that long, against a single seated session a bit over an hour. At one acre a rider is a preference. At two it is the only configuration that finishes.

1. The rider, and the claim that moved backwards

Two machines in our registry publish a two-acre figure. The EGO Z6 ZT4204L publishes a 42 inch deck, a 22 HP gas-equivalent claim, 8 MPH top speed, four 56V 10.0Ah packs in a bay that takes six, up to two acres per charge and a 5-year warranty on tool, battery and charger. The RYOBI ZR3 publishes a 42 inch 12-gauge fabricated steel deck, four brushless motors, two 80V 14Ah packs, up to two acres in ECO mode, a 25 HP gas-equivalent claim, front and rear 2 inch hitches rated to 250 lb, on-board charging and a 5-year warranty.

Two things to take from that table. First, the EGO and the RYOBI independently land on 1,120 watt-hours per acre from completely different pack architectures — four 56V packs and two 80V ones — which is the only cross-brand corroboration we have for any rider energy figure. Second, and more practically:

We build this kit on the ZT4204L for two reasons: it is the only EGO rider that publishes a two-acre claim, and its bay takes two more packs than it ships with, which is the only published headroom on any rider in our registry. The full ZT4214L spec sheet — which is genuinely more complete than the ZT4204L's in every other respect — is in our ZT4214L review, and the three riders are ranked against each other in best riding mowers for two acres.

#ad Check the EGO Power+ Z6 42" Zero Turn ZT4204L price on Amazon — how we're funded.

2. The trimmer, running on the rider's batteries

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 two acres has a great deal of edge. This is where buying the rider on EGO pays a second time.

The split shaft is the other reason for this trimmer rather than a cheaper one: it accepts EGO's edger and pole saw heads, which on two acres of boundary is the cheapest expansion available. See multi-head attachment systems.

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

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

3. The blower, sized for a long drive

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 both ends of its runtime: 15 minutes on turbo and 150 minutes on low from a 5.0Ah pack.

Publishing both ends is why it is here rather than a smaller model. A two-acre property usually means a long drive, outbuildings and more hard surface than a suburban lot has, and a figure of 15 minutes is one you can plan around in a way 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 the rider brought the packs. The two EGO blowers are compared in EGO LB7650 vs LB6504.

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

4. The hedge trimmer, which is new at this size

This is the one tool the acre kit does not include and the two-acre kit does. Two acres almost always comes with a boundary — a hedge line, a tree row, a fence with growth on it — and a string trimmer is the wrong tool for woody growth.

The EGO HT2410 publishes a 24 inch forged steel blade, a 1 inch cut capacity, 3,000 strokes per minute, a dual-action fully serviceable blade, 6.17 lb as a bare tool, and compatibility with any EGO 56V ARC Lithium pack. It is sold bare, which on this kit is exactly right.

The honest gaps: EGO publishes no runtime claim for this tool at all and no noise figure, so we cannot tell you how long a hedge session lasts on any pack — the only sizing you get is the 1 inch cut capacity. The alternatives are ranked in best hedge trimmers, and best for thick hedges covers the case where 1 inch is not enough.

#ad Check the EGO Power+ 24" Hedge Trimmer HT2410 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 deed. Two acres of land is 87,120 square feet and the house, drive, outbuildings, beds and any woodland come out of it. People at this size routinely over-buy because they size against the parcel. How to measure your lawn has the method.
2. Buy the rider first and buy the coverage claim, not the horsepower claim. The gas-equivalent numbers on these machines range from 22 to 25 HP and tell you nothing about whether you finish. The acreage figure does.
3. Check where you will store and charge it. The riders in our registry run to 456 lb where a weight is published at all, and EGO publishes no weight or dimensions for either Z6. Riding mower storage covers what that means in a garage.
4. Then add the handhelds, bare, on the rider's platform. You already own the largest packs you will ever own; buying kit versions duplicates them. Bare tool or kit has the rule.
5. Only then consider the two empty bays. Two more 10.0Ah packs takes the ZT4204L from 2,240Wh to 3,360Wh and, on its own per-acre figure, from two acres to three. Buy them when you have run out, not before.

Who this kit is for, and who should skip it

It is for you if you have between about one and a half and two acres of actual grass; your ground is flat to gently rolling, because no electric rider in our registry publishes a slope rating; you have somewhere dry to park and charge a machine of 400-plus pounds; and you want the handhelds to run on the rider's batteries rather than on four separate kit packs.

Each pick, and who it is not for. The ZT4204L rider is for the reader who needs the two-acre claim and the two empty bays; skip it if your lawn is under an acre and a half, where the better-documented ZT4214L or a Greenworks CrossoverZ costs less and claims enough. The ST1521S trimmer is for a long boundary and for anyone who will later add an edger or pole saw head to its split shaft; skip it if you need a published weight before buying a tool you hold at arm's length, because EGO does not publish one. The LB7650 blower is for a long drive and outbuildings and for anyone who wants both ends of a runtime claim published; skip it if your hard surface is a single short path, where the smaller LB6504 is enough. The HT2410 hedge trimmer is for a hedge line or tree row with growth up to an inch thick; skip it past an inch, and skip it if you need a runtime figure, because EGO publishes none for this tool at all.

Skip the whole kit if your property is mostly slope (nobody publishes a rating, so nobody can tell you it is safe), if you are under about an acre — the acre kit is the cheaper answer — or if you already own packs on a different platform, in which case the platform decision comes first and the platform hub is where it starts.

What two acres does not need

• A robot mower. The largest working area any robot in our registry publishes is 0.9 acre, less than half of what you have. Robot mowers for one acre covers where the ratings actually land.
• A walk-behind as the main mower. The largest published acreage rating on any walk-behind we hold is one acre and the longest runtime claim is 80 minutes across two packs. A walk-behind at this size is a trim mower for banks and gates, not the mower.
• The newer EGO Z6. Stated plainly because it is counter-intuitive: the ZT4214L publishes 1.5 acres. It is the better-documented machine and the wrong one for this property.
• A backpack blower. 765 CFM handheld on a rider pack gives you roughly five hours on low, which is more blower time than two acres of hard surface will ever ask for. Backpack blowers covers when it does.
• A second rider. The two empty bays are the upgrade path, and they are far cheaper than another machine.

The smaller versions of this kit are the half-acre kit and the acre kit; the running-cost arithmetic for a rider is in riding mower cost and acres per charge.

What we cannot tell you

We have not run this kit, or any rider, across a season. The 79 minute figure rests on our own 4 MPH cutting assumption, because no maker publishes a realistic cutting speed as opposed to a transport speed; at 5 MPH the same two acres is about 63 minutes. The 640Wh-per-acre walking figure comes from two manufacturers' acreage ratings rather than a measurement, and neither states the grass conditions behind it. EGO publishes no weight and no dimensions for either Z6, no runtime claim at all for the HT2410 hedge trimmer, and no weight for the ST1521S in this configuration. Neither EGO nor RYOBI publishes a slope rating, which on two acres of anything other than flat ground is the figure that would actually decide the purchase. The gas-equivalent horsepower claims on both riders are marketing conversions with no published method. And nobody publishes how any of these coverage claims degrade as packs age, which on a machine carrying four or six of them is the figure that decides what this kit is like in year five.