I have a bit of old field hedge I am going to 'lay'. It's too much for an old man to do with a bow saw and bill hook so am looking at a cordless chainsaw. Browsing what is available is increasing my confusion.
It seems if I have a battery and charger I can normally power a range of tools, maybe a pruner and a strimmer could be added as needed. So I am stuck with the brand I first go with, no? Which will likely be either Screwfix, toolstn or a recognised brand like makita / dewalt, are any of them particularly bad? Am I going to want to buy two batteries to work all day? Will they charge in the time it takes to run the other one down? And the power ratings sometimes in Ah, sometimes in V, what do I need? This is DIY work, so occasional use for short hours, but needs to be capable and safe.
In the outdoor power equipment category, I have a 36V chainsaw, 36V brushutter/line-trimmer, 18V hedge-trimmer and leaf sucker/blower, all take the same 18v batteries.
unless you want a forest of different chargers and batteries (adapters ar available, but can make the tools unwieldy if they fit at all).
two sets likely, maybe more. The brush cutter can go through 2x5Ah and 2x6Ah batteries in a couple of hours and then my back is ready for a recharge. Thankfully the weeds are under better control this year than the last couple of years, so I haven't needed the strimmer.
I went with Makita for the huge range of tools, and common batteries, they now have a "newish" range of 40V tools, but the 18V range is by no means dead yet.
Yup, understandably, there is plenty of choice out there.
Yup, unless you only need one class of tool as a disposable for a few jobs, choosing a rechargeable "platform" makes much more sense. Then you can share batteries and chargers.
Indeed - so choose a range that has all the tools you are likely to need. Makita have a very large range of cordless tools in general but also lots of garden type kit. Bosch have some innovative stuff, and very good quality, but slightly fewer garden tools.
I would say go with a brand. You will pay slightly more, but the tools will generally be better. You will also be able to get spare parts and there are service centres that can fix them if required.
Note that some tools have more than one class of tools - so Bosch for example have green bodied tools aimed at the more casual DIY market, and blue bodied stuff aimed at the pro/enthusiast market. (others like Black and Decker do their pro stuff on the DeWalt badge)
Yup at least two - unless going for 36V tools that need two at a time, in which case at least four!
The better modern LiIon platforms have active cooling built into the chargers (they have temperature sensors in the batteries, and forced air cooling built into the chargers), so you can safely take a battery off a tool that has been running hard, and slap it straight into the charger, and it will cool it and charge it with no danger of overheating the battery.
Depends a bit on the drain rate of the tool. My Makita chargers can do a full charge in 15 to 40 mins depending on the capacity of the pack.
A tool like a hedge trimmer, or a chain saw will keep you going for longer than that on a fresh battery - so you could work continuously if you want (and are able!) to.
Something like a cordless angle grinder can probably use a full battery in 10 to 15 mins if worked hard.
The voltage will give you a very rough idea of the performance, with higher being more powerful. However they are also larger and heavier.
The market seems to be moving toward 18V being the standard general battery platform, with 10.8V gaining attention for a range of smaller lighter tools. The middle voltages (12V 14.4V etc) seem far less common then they once were, although Milwaukee are pushing their 12V "Fuel" range quite heavily.
There are also a new range of tools that run on higher voltage platforms. Even Makita have done a 40V platform in a new battery design, (which is odd since they already have a large range of 36V tools that use 2 18V batteries). (note that 36V and 40V tools are actually exactly the same voltage - the extra 4V is "marketing" by using the peak charged voltage of the pack, rather than its more nominal operating voltage!) (18V and 20V batts are the same for the same reason).
The capacity in Ah will give you an indication of the run time on a given tool - with a Li-ion platform you should get much the same performance from a 3Ah and a 5Ah battery, but longer run time on the bigger one.
Given you want capable, and the option to expand the number of tools, one of the "pro" platforms would suit your needs better in my opinion.
Tools bought "body only" (i.e. no batteries or charger) can be quite cost effective even on high end brands (i.e. you can pickup a Makita 18V Combi drill for under £40 that way)
Sometimes it is worth looking out for a bargain deal with one of the tools that you want that includes batts and charger, and then add the others as body only - either at the same time or later.
Surely that's the same marketing applied to a 3 cells in series battery:
3S at 3.6V per cell = 10.8V, 3S at 4.0V per cell = 12V?
14.4V made some sense as a NiMH to lithium crossover battery (12 NiMH cells to 4 lithium cells) but now NiMH is dead and buried for power tools I'm not sure of the advantage. It seems to turn up on cheaper tools where they can save cost by omitting a lithium cell, and don't need to conform to a 'system' - eg the budget tools that come with their own battery.
I think the 40V systems make some kind of sense where 2x18V would be too heavy or bulky. You're going to run through the 40V battery faster (as it's typically half the Ah of a single 18V for the same volume), but it's better to swap batteries than it is to have to carry 2x18v in your hand all day.
But, looking at Makita anyway, it seems like 18v is still the bread and butter, and I'd prefer to have 2x18V than a 40V special case. Maybe I'd change my mind if I was breaking concrete or something.
I have set alerts at hotukdeals.com and Makita deals come up quite regularly. All the various retailers seem to have offers (especially ebay offers) at one time or another.
Though if you watch review channels on youtube (Tools&Stuff being one that's Makita centric) the 40V versions often beat the 2x18V versions, sometimes its for "obvious" reasons such as one is brushed the other brushless, some run better with bigger batter packs using 21700 instead of 18650, others don't.
Yup possibly - I presume that 12V has fallen from use because it is not a 3.6V multiple. Not sure what Milwaukee are doing with theirs.
Yup I have seen a few comments to the effect of "wow these 40V tools perform really well, but the battery life is poor".
The only 36V one I have a top handle chainsaw. The bulk fits into the platform nicely and is used to balance it. Performance is exceptionally good (probably as good as my 45cc Makita (Dolmar) petrol saw.
Something else worth mentioning, is that when a budget Chinese tool maker wants to copy a battery platform, they tend to copy Makita's - so there are a number of "cheap" tools out there that will use the same batteries.
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