BLACK+DECKER POWERCONNECT Strimmer, Cordless 28cm String Grass Trimmer, STC1820PC-GB

Good value product, I took advantage of a free extra battery offer available online. Battery last long enough to do the lawn edges, around the stepping stones and wall area of my medium/large size garden and a bit more . It's just as good as my previous B&D lead acid cell battery strimmer which I had for many years, only a bit lighter and easier to handle. It is very well designed and good build quality. The wheel is good when edging as it takes the weight of the machine and as I prefer the line feed type of striimer that is a plus for me. It takes about 4 hours to charge the battery so an extra one may be useful, although I have yet to need mine. I haven't needed to use the high speed setting yet either but it gives the appearance of bring very powerful and effective should you need to trim longer grass or weeds. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this product for normal lawn use.

There are other cheaper cordless strimmers but I wanted a well built one that was robust, easy to use and had a decent battery life. After reading the reviews I decided to splash out on this Black and Decker model. I have not been disappointed it has been great to use and has lived up to my expectations. If buying a bit of kit like this it is worth getting a bit better quality as it will pay in the longer term as I have found to my cost before when thinking I could save money and still be satisfied. With tools generally that is never the case and especially garden tools which do get hard use. This strimmer has different settings allowing easy change of strimmer head position, different lengths so you can get a comfortable position standing upright not bending. The handle is well positioned and comfortable to use as well all this is important if spending time trimming lawn edges etc. It is light and easy to manoeuvre as well. Battery life has not yet let me down either. I can now zoom round my lawn edging in minutes before it took me ages and left me with an aching back. Highly recommend this strimmer.

Not a heavy duty item. This is a light and relatively low powered strimmer. It works around the garden for trimming lawn to path and mowing plants out of the cracks in crazy paving, but dont try to wade into deep weeds with it. It will not enjoy it. It has two speeds, one which will economise on battery usage, and one that will cut stuff. The battery it came with was small, and takes forever to charge, so unless you buy multiple batteries, dont expect to do too much in one go. The string feed seems to work really well. Sometimes I find it a little difficult to get it into a good gutting position, but it is ok, and my garden looks a lot tidier.

Summary: easy to adjust, well made and good quality; I get about 45 minutes mixed (high and low speed) use out of a fully charged battery; cutting power and edging very good.As context, I was actually looking for a strimmer with a power cord, as I was expecting cordless ones to be a bit disappointing in performance and battery life. Doing my research, I found that a lot of people feel the same, and I also found that rechargeable strimmers are surprisingly expensive!I also found a lot of unknown brands, which were also fairly expensive, and had very mixed reviews. All this left me unwilling to purchase.So I started again, this time focusing my search on:- brand (focussing on well-known ones like Bosch and Black & Decker)- weight (as I realised this would be a potential drawback given weights of up to 3.5kg I'd found during the first search)- battery life (where I could find it - not all manufacturers give an estimate)- power (I wanted something that would be reasonable for fairly light use; I knew I wasn't going to be clearing undergrowth on a regular basis!)I found that a lot of strimmers now use proprietary blades, which can be difficult to find, cost more than nylon line, and cause regular interruptions to use as they need to be changed fairly frequently. I decided to focus on nylon line strimmers.In the end, this Black & Decker strimmer was one of two on the shortlist, and was my choice due to the price! The other one came without a battery and charger, which added another £40 or so. I won't name the other brand and prices go up and down a lot anyway, but do be aware of accidentally buying a so-called "bare" product!I've used it several times now, including clearing a friend's much larger garden. Using the a mix of the normal (5500rpm) and turbo (7400rpm) I got about 45 minutes use from a full charge, which included a significant amount of "undergrowth" clearing that I wouldn't typically be doing. Your usage will of course be different to mine, but if you're doing normal speed trimming and edging, I'd expect to get 45 minutes to an hour out of the product on a single battery charge, which is hopefully plenty for the majority of gardens. (If yours needs more than an hours trimming each session, you've probably already got a gardener anyway!)Pros:- fairly lightweight (2.1kg)- well-balanced and significant adjustment in length- easy to assemble- uses nylon line, not proprietary bladesCons:- rechargeable battery has a finite life (so get a mains-powered or petrol driven one if you need open-ended usage)Tips:- watch out for "bare" products (i.e. without battery and charger) unless you've already got the battery on other tools from the same manufacturer- check out the weight of the strimmer: there's variation by more than 1kg in otherwise similar models in some cases!- make sure you know whether it uses continuous nylon line or individual blades; I'd recommend line as it's much easier to change and makes continuous use easierOverall, I happily recommend this, and even if it's not for you, do consider if the criteria I've included in the review help you to choose your own (different) one.

Have had our Black & Decker strimmer now for about five years and it has performed valiantly, still on its original battery, so I'm very pleased with the purchase. It holds its charge well and I get at least 20 mins running time from each full charge. To replace an exhausted spool line it's quite simple to unclip the spool holder and insert either a new full spool, or wrap a re-fill spool line around the spool and through its little hole. This is a very sturdy, easy to operate, well-designed machine that is a credit to the B&D line of products, in my opinion. Its recharging is a simple matter of unhitching the small lithium battery unit from the handle and plugging it into its charger cord unit for about 20 mins-30 mins if charge is totally spent.