Ego Brand Electric Tools

[twistsol]

My brother in law was lamenting that he spends more time trying to start his old chainsaw (mid eighties McCulloch from our father in law) than he spends using it. Same with his string trimmer although that is somewhat better. He's thinking of switching to battery powered and was looking at the Ego tools that HD used to carry, but now are at Ace stores. Does anyone have any experience with this brand. A neighbor has one of their push mowers and he seems to like it, but I haven't seen these in the wild anywhere else.

I did point him to Ryobi since I have a string trimmer that works great and my daughter has one of the battery powered snow blowers that she loves.

[Egar]

I've got the EGO 21" mower, string trimmer, and blower. I've had the mower for 4 years, the trimmer for 3 years, and got the blower this summer. I've been very happy with all three. Very comparable in performance to any gas powered tool I've had and they are a whole lot easier to maintain.

[Jim Frye]

My neighbor has several Ego tools. His are the 56 volt line. He has a walk behind mower, a leaf blower, and one other tool. He likes them a lot. He doesn’t use the walk behind much since getting a Ryobi 48 volt riding mower. We have another neighbor on the street with an Egomwalk behind and he is happy with it. You just have to make sure you you have enough battery to mow what you want at a time. I also have a Ryobi RM480 riding mower which is superior to the ICE mowers of similar size. I recently tossed my 12 year old Troybilt string trimmer when it stopped running. I replaced it with a Ryobi 40 volt string trimmer power head as it can use all of the TrimmerPlus and ExpandIt accessories that I have accumulated over the decades. I tilled my garden this fall with it. I will be replacing the old Toro gas snow thrower with a Ryobi 40 volt snow thrower.

[leehljp]

Every gas tool (oil/gas mix) runs so much better with the pre-mixed gas, as expensive as it is. The expensive pre-mixed is worth every penny to me. My chain saws and weed eaters and blowers work great since I started feeding them correctly.

That said, I like my 18VRyobi hand tools, but I have a couple of 40V tools ( blower and hedge trimmer - Ryobi) that I rarely use. I get such long runs relative-wise with 18V that I thought that the 40V would do as well as the 18V tools. The 40V battery on the Blower runs about 18 to 20 minutes. For the blower, once I get started, it stays on continuously, especially in on the roof blowing leaves out of the gutter. 20 minutes does only about half of the gutters. Greatly disappointed. I can stretch the hedge trimmer to 30 - 40 minutes by turning it on and off but the blower is on continuously once I start.

As far as a weed eater is concerned, the 40V should do well. My daughter has an 18V 4ampH and gets a good bit done with a single battery.

No experience with the Ego brand. Good to read that Battery Power is advancing quickly!

[capncarl]

Not Eco brand, but Echo brand, I gave away my gas trimmer, chain saw, blower and hedge trimmer and went battery. 40 volt Ryobi for anything that was expand type tool and 56 volt Echo chain saw and trimmer. I can also operate a Stil mini tiller that has a simular shaft as the expand shafts.
The battery chain saws still have a ways to go to match gas though. The manufacturers install a tiny chain and bar to make up the difference but it doesn’t last as long before it has to be re-sharpened. The smaller gauge chain doesn’t appear to take as many re-sharpenings as a regular chain. I use the 56 volt chainsaw to cut wood for my tiny trees. This year I have already cut 5 pickup loads of standing dead dogwood, chinaberry and persimmon, this is some hard wood, nearly petrified. The property owner where I cut this wood laughed when I brought out a battery powered chainsaw, but didn’t have much to say when it easily did the job.

The reason I chose the Echo 56volt chainsaw over Dewalt, Ryobi and Eco was the whimpy “tool less” chain and bar tension device. They don’t work on serious chain saws and are a constant source of misery, so I went with Echo with a real wrench required to tension the chain and bar.