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You can equally use any quality grade oil provided it can protect your tool from wear, tear, and corrosion. The best oil for your hedge trimmer is SAE20 or 3-in-1 multipurpose engine oil. With many options, picking the best oil for your hedge trimmer can be tricky. Like any gardening tool that makes cutting more straightforward, the metal blades of your hedge trimmer need constant lubrication with oils, or else they start to rust and underperform. If you make a purchase through links from this website, we may get a small share of the sale from Amazon and other similar affiliate programs.Ī hedge trimmer is a handy tool to trim your hedges and shrubs while making beautiful shapes.
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You can also explore our comprehensive ratings of battery and corded hedge trimmers.As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases made on our website. We also assessed handling, weight, and balance, and evaluated run time and charge time, along with noise at the ear of the operator.ĬR members can read on about the top-scoring hedge trimmers from our tests. We also sized up safety, looking for features like a protective sheath for the cutting bar, blade brakes to stop cutting in an emergency, and designs that would prevent the tools from being a danger to children (for instance, interlocks, or cutting bars that keep small fingers away from the cutting path). And while we focused our testing on corded and battery hedge trimmers, we used a single premium gasoline model for reference to make sure the battery tools packed the same punch and could hold their own against a gas tool. They started with small growth, about a quarter inch in diameter, working all the way up to inch-thick pieces, noting how quickly and cleanly each tool worked. Huge swaths of the invasive chutes dominate much of our outdoor space, but that created an opportunity for our testers to put hedge trimmers into use, testing for cutting capacity on patches of bamboo. Corded electric and battery options are also better for the environment.Īt our Yonkers, N.Y., headquarters, we have a bit of a bamboo problem. But they’re likely overkill in most residential yards. Gas hedge trimmers: They’re powerful tools used by pros and on large properties.Most outdoor cords max out around 100 feet. You’ll need an outdoor outlet, though, and you’ll be limited by the length of the extension cord. They tend to be far cheaper-some are only about $50-and can run indefinitely as long as they’re plugged in. Corded electric hedge trimmers: These trimmers are all you need for lighter trimming close to the house.“When measured without a load, some of the trimmers we tested were able to run nearly 2 hours on a single charge,” says Misha Kollontai, who is in charge of hedge trimmer testing at CR.
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Our engineers have found that battery models can be pretty impressive.
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CR members can jump to our recommendations or our hedge trimmer ratings. Battery hedge trimmers (that is, cordless hedge trimmers), dominate in home centers and hardware stores, so that’s where we focus the bulk of our testing. As a whole, you’ll find three types of hedge trimmers: battery-powered, corded electric, and gas.
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