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MOW & MEADOW

Trimmers & Edgers

The line gauge and the head design decide whether you enjoy this job or dread it.

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String trimmer cutting long grass at a lawn edge

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Trimmer listings lead with swath width and runtime. Neither is in the top two things that will determine whether you like the tool. Line gauge and how you reload the spool are, and both are buried at the bottom of every product page.

A string trimmer is also the most efficient tool in the shed — roughly 3.6 to 4.7 watt-hours per minute, about a quarter of what a blower on turbo burns. That has a practical consequence most people miss: the small pack in a trimmer kit is what makes the tool feel limited, and a mower-sized pack fixes it completely.

This section covers string trimmers, edgers and hedge trimmers — three tools that in practice run on the same battery and, on multi-head systems, the same motor.

In this section

27 pages under Trimmers & Edgers. Every recommendation is built from published specifications and arithmetic you can redo — we have not tested these units.

Line gauge is the specification people regret

The arithmetic — 0.095 in vs 0.080 in
Line strength scales with cross-sectional area
0.080 in: pi x 0.040^2 = 0.00503 sq in
0.095 in: pi x 0.0475^2 = 0.00709 sq in
The heavier gauge has 41% more material resisting a bramble stem

EGO and Ryobi both ship 0.095 inch. Greenworks ships 0.080 inch on its 80V trimmer. Every break is a stop to re-feed, so this specification decides how often your job is interrupted — and it is the last line in most listings.

How you reload, which you will do a dozen times a season

EGO's POWERLOAD winds the spool for you: feed the line through, press a button. Ryobi and Greenworks use bump feed, which advances line while you work but still leaves you hand-winding when the spool empties.

Sitting on the grass winding nylon that wants to spring off the reel is the job everybody puts off. If you trim weekly through the season, an automatic head is worth more than fifteen minutes of runtime. Full detail in the buying guide.

Weight, with a pack fitted

TrimmerBareWith a pack
Greenworks ST80L2107.1 lbNot published
Ryobi RY4021108.8 lb12.9 lb (6.0Ah)
EGO ST1521SNot publishedNot published

Ryobi is the only one of the three to publish both figures. 4.1 lb of battery on the end of a 72-inch shaft is a lot of leverage.

There is a fix nobody mentions: fit a smaller pack. A trimmer draws about 3.6 to 4.7 watt-hours per minute, so even a 2.0Ah pack gives a usable session, and most residential trimming is under twenty minutes. Trade runtime you do not need for weight you feel.

Multi-head systems change the economics

A split-shaft trimmer takes attachments, which turns one power head into a trimmer, an 8-inch edger and a 10-inch pole saw. EGO publishes runtime figures for the edger attachment at four different pack sizes — 50 minutes on a 4.0Ah through 132 on a 10.0Ah — which is unusually complete documentation for an accessory.

The corollary is worth stating plainly: an attachment is excellent value on a power head you already own and poor value if you are buying the power head to justify it. That asymmetry is why we score the same tool 9.5 on-platform and 4.0 standalone.

Hedge trimmers are decided by one number

Cut capacity — the maximum branch diameter the blade gap can sever. Below it the trimmer cuts; above it the branch wedges and the tool stalls. EGO publishes 1 inch on the HT2410, at the top of what cordless hedge trimmers claim, and it publishes no runtime figure at all — a gap we name rather than fill.