Anyone tried these?

Following on from a previous thread…pretty much decided on an Echo 265TES brushcutter as I have about 9-10 acres of grazing land in various locations (0.7 acre up to 4 acre) to keep check of. 90% of the work will be grass, nettles, thistles around fencing etc and some bramble clearance but looking for something that will act as a back up for the odd bit of branch cutting and hedge trimming where it gets close to the fencing or looks like it might break and take out the fence etc. ie not enough to justify some dedicated expensive tools.

Am tempted more by the electric as it’s nice to just pick up and use without having to mess about starting and more concerned over cheaply made petrol engines than I am over electric motors.

Examples:

18v 4.0 battery is £75, charger £35, pruner is £99 and hedge trimmer £82. As a bonus they have a 265Nm impact wrench for £85 which would be handy.

26cc petrol unit is £99, pruner £65 and hedge trimmer £69.

I have a Ryobi One Drill.

One battery went up in smoke on first charge.
One battery died in a couple of months.
One more battery gave up after 1 year and one week.
I wouldn’t again.

I bought a 4.0 battery and charger to use with a second hand Ryobi circular saw I picked up of EBay a few months ago and so far so good with plenty of use. Just wish they’d make a decent DAB radio like Makita does and I could use the batteries for that as well. 🙂

I’ve been using the Ryobi one system with a drill, reciprocating saw and a barely used 90 degree drill. Never had a problem with any of them.

This thread trigger potential cross-site scripting … not sure why.

^ odd, not seen any problems.

Spotted that Amazon have a 4 for 3 offer on home and garden stuff at the moment, Ryobi included, but their prices are a bit high which offsets the savings.

Have decided to just buy some decent quality manual tools for what we need to do as we need some new cutters anyway. unfortunately they don’t do the Fiskar long brush hook or any decent machetes 🙁

Picked up the brushcutter this morning and have just been out to try it out. Feels quite underwhelming as not very noisy, hardly any vibration and very easy to handle. it just cut everything down. I probably should have got changed though as I am now covered in grass and nettle fragments.

I like the Ryobi One+ stuff – been usign it for a few years although for most smaller jobs now I’ve got some Bosch 10.8v stuff that’s as good.

When I looked at everything they do I can see they have put a lot of work into it now. A lot of the blue Ryobi stuff of recent years seemed to be generic stuff with their label slapped on it. I quite like the look of the circular saw style tile cutter and the figures look good for the impact driver if they can deliver it.

covered in grass and nettle fragments

I always dress for the occasion just in case I hit something brown and sticky that isn’t a stick.

Andy, I’ve never seen a ‘farmer’ clear nettles/etc from around fence posts. For bramblesand nettles I’d be hitting it with SBK if you really wanted to get rid of it.

For bramblesand nettles I’d be hitting it with SBK if you really wanted to get rid of it.

So would I, and will be flattening the lot with weedkiller when the sheep are moved on from this particular bit of land. As we have to put in secondary electric sheep net I have to trim down around the existing fence (broken, incomplete etc) to stop it earthing on long grass/weeds. The joys of having to rent small parcels land.