Best Grass Trimmer 2025: Tidy your garden this summer

Packed with safety features, easy to use and extremely powerful, it’s no wonder that the Stihl FSA 57 is one of our favourite grass trimmers.

Weighing just 3.5kg with the recommended AK10 battery attached the FSA 57 is a lightweight cordless trimmer that’s ergonomically designed for maximum comfort and control. Its height is even adjustable for extra ease.

The recommended AK10 battery offers a decent runtime of around 20-25 minutes, which we found is more than enough to see you through a medium to large sized garden. It’s recommended for the FSA 57 by Stihl as it offers a good compromise between weight and runtime.

Even so, you can pair the trimmer with larger AK20 or AK30 batteries if you do find yourself needing a longer runtime, just note that this will make using the trimmer heavier.

Included is an easy to load C3-2 mowing head which comes equipped with a 1.6mm cutting line, although you can also fit up to 2mm line if that suits your garden better. If you would prefer blades then there’s an optional polycut mowing head available which takes clip-in plastic blades too.

Although it lacks the rotating head of its predecessor, the FSA 57 performs impressively well and makes light work of the most dreaded garden tasks from mowing long grass to thicker and overgrown sections. It also has a flip-down space guard at the front which is perfect for maintenance and ensures you don’t get the trimmer too close to any plants or flowers.

The FSA 57 boasts nifty extra features including a battery locking position, which keeps the battery locked in place but without making contact, allowing you to easily transport the trimmer around without accidentally starting it, and easy to see charge levels indicated by LEDs.

Lightweight, powerful and perfect for medium to large-sized gardens, the Stihl FSA 57 grass trimmer is a perfect choice to challenge all garden tasks.

The LawnMaster MX 24V Cordless Grass Trimmer is exceptionally good value, and comes with a wide range of extras.

With the kit, you get the trimmer, a 2.0Ah battery and charger, and a set of clip-on wheels that can make the device easier to use, particularly for edging. And, there’s a handy kick-out plant guard to protect your prized flowers when trimming.

The flip side is that this trimmer feels a bit cheap and plasticky, and there are more robust-feeling alternatives on this list.

A 1.6mm auto-feed line and 25cm cutting width make the LawnMaster MX 24V Cordless Grass Trimmer better suited to smaller gardens and regular jobs; if you’ve got tough weeds to cut through, a more powerful alternative may suit you more.

We found this trimmer easy enough to use, slicing through our grass growth with ease, but struggling a little with some areas covered in blackberry brambles.

Lasting around 25 minutes on a charge, this trimmer is good for smaller areas.

It’s not the best built, but the range of accessories, low price and ease of handling make it a good budget choice.

Most grass trimmers are quite hard to store, as they’re very long. The DeWalt DCMST61 doesn’t have this issue, as it cleverly folds in half, making it easy to keep in a shed or even throw in the back of a car if you need to trim someone else’s lawn.

The folding mechanism feels robust and easy to use, and there’s plenty of metal in the strimmer’s construction. The downside is that the design limits where the handle can go, which makes it feel a little front-heavy and the DCMST61 isn’t the most comfortable trimmer that we’ve used.

This tool uses DeWalt’s 18V range of batteries. If you already have batteries to use, the DCMST61 is great value; it’s a little expensive if you have to factor in the cost of a battery and charger.

With a 5Ah battery, the trimmer lasts about 30 minutes, which is enough to deal with a medium-sized gardens.

Cutting power from the DCMST61 is great, with the 2.0mm line handling some thicker growth. It’s a shame that plastic blades aren’t available for dealing with woody growth.

If you’re short on storage space and/or have DeWalt batteries, this is a great choice, but it is quite expensive and not the easiest to handle.

A more powerful tool for bigger jobs, the Stihl FSA 70 is a brushcutter, which can deal with thick growth and weeds thanks to its powerful motor and choice of cutting head.

Although powerful, the FSA 70 isn’t particularly bigger of heavier than Stihl’s regular trimmers, such as the FSA 57.

Here, you get the same comfort grip and head, where the trimmer naturally rests against your arm, with a front handle making this trimmer easy to hold.

There’s a 2.0mm bump-feed line as standard, but this trimmer can take line up to 2.4mm. For tougher jobs, you can replace the line with the Polycut 12-2 mowing head, which uses dual plastic blades. These reduce cutting width from 38cm to 33cm, but provide more power and extend runtime.

With the plastic blades, the FSA 70 will cut through brambles and woody growth with ease; the standard line makes short work of large areas and regular growth.

Running on the Stihl AK system, the FSA 70 will last between 25 and 45 minutes when using an AK 20 cell, so will deal with larger gardens.

The battery can be locked in a storage position for safety, and there’s an ergonomic set of safety switches, too.

For larger spaces and thicker growth, this tool is exceptional.

Reasonably priced, lightweight and powerful, the Stihl FSA 45 is a perfect option for those with smaller gardens but require a hard-working device.

Although the FSA 45 is lightweight at just 2.3kg, we found it still feels reassuringly durable and able to tackle jobs easily. The shaft length can be altered from 1100 to 1300mm for comfortable holding regardless of your height, plus you can adjust the main handle and cutting head to achieve the perfect angle you need.

Rather than a traditional strimmer line, the FSA 45 has two PolyCut blades instead which have been designed to provide a precise cut.

We found the FSA 45’s performance to be excellent as the dual PolyCut blades made light work of grass borders and cut through grass easily. Having said that, for longer or thicker clumps or brambles, we’d recommend a slightly more powerful grass strimmer as the FSA 45 had a tendency to jam when faced with such jobs.

Its battery is pre-installed which means the FSA 45 needs to be charged with the provided power adapter plugged into the main body, which is a slight inconvenience compared to models with external battery packs.

Speaking of the battery, we found it takes around three and a half hours to charge to 100% and then subsequently will last for around 20 minutes. Stihl promises that this is long enough to tackle lawn edges up to 250m and we concluded that it was plenty for a small to medium-sized garden.

If you have a small garden or minimal grass and shrubbery to maintain, then we can’t recommend the Stihl FSA 45 enough. Not only is it lightweight and adjustable for comfortable use but the two PolyCut blades cut through grass with little effort.

If you have a larger garden or thicker weeds and brambles to chop through then we’d recommend a more powerful model such as the Stihl FSA 57 instead.

Rather than using a proprietary battery system, the Husqvarna Aspire T28-P4A uses the Power for All Alliance 18V battery system. With batteries compatible with tools from a wide-range of manufacturers, including Bosch, Gardena and Flymo (both garden and DIY products), you can mix and match tools.

It’s a brilliant idea for the consumer and gives you more freedom to choose the tools you want.

We found the Husqvarna Aspire T28-P4A to be very well designed and built. An adjustable shaft makes it easy to get a comfortable trimming position, and the use of the colour orange to highlight the important bits (adjustment points, controls and trimmer head), this model is easy to use.

There’s an auto-feed trimmer head for the 2.0mm line. This wastes a bit more line than a bump feed, but ensures that you’ve always got the right cutting head.

Decent ergonomics make this trimmer easy to use, although its 18V power pack and 28cm cutting width mean it’s best for smaller jobs. Likewise, the 30-minute runtime from a 4Ah battery suggests that this tool is best suited for small-to-medium-sized gardens.

Compatible with Ryobi’s 18V batteries, which power over 200 tools, the Ryobi 18V ONE+ HP Cordless Whisper 38cm Grass Trimmer RY18LTX38A-0 is a great trimmer and brilliant value if you can reuse existing batteries.

This model is the largest in the range, and is designed to be quiet. While we can’t say that it’s particularly as quiet as a whisper, on lower speeds, thanks to low-power mode and the variable speed trigger, this tool is pretty quiet.

With the trigger in about half-way, this tool and its 2.0mm line can handle most regular grass growth with ease. High power mode and a faster cutting speed lets this tool deal with thicker growth and larger patches, although the lack of a brushcutter head does mean it can’t deal with the woody growth.

A 38cm cutting width is good for covering large areas. Judging by the amount of grass cuttings on our trousers at the end of cutting, the guard could do with being a little wider.

Battery life is good: more than 30 minutes in low-power mode, which is good for a medium-sized garden with regular growth; on high-power mode, 20 minutes of runtime from a 4Ah battery is good for a smaller overgrown space. Realistically, for larger spaces, you’ll want an extra battery or two.

If you have batteries already, this is a big and powerful trimmer; those without Ryobi batteries and bigger areas to cover may prefer an alternative from this list.