Stanley Fatmax Cordless Strimmer Review

At the start of the year I found myself in need of a new strimmer for the allotment, my old Hyundai petrol one having given up the ghost. I had decided to go cordless this time, due to a couple of factors: weight and the ever-rising price of fuel being two of the biggest ones.

But which cordless strimmer to choose? Well after much deliberation and research I settled on the Stanley Fatmax cordless strimmer. One of the main reasons behind this decision being I already had a Stanley drill and multi-tool, meaning I didn't need to buy a charger or batteries saving me a chunk of cash.

But was it the right decision? Read my review to see my thoughts on this cordless strimmer.

Strimming

This cordless strimmer handled everything I threw at it with no issues. It only has a single string coming out rather than the double you find on traditional strimmers and I guess this is to help with battery life.

It still managed to get through thick, overgrown grass without issue. I have a quick video of me using the strimmer below. On handed I might add as I had the camera in my other hand, no chance you would be able to manage that with a petrol strimmer!

Two Speeds

The trimmer has a high and low setting. The high speed will provide more cutting power but will use up the battery quicker.

I like having the option here to either go for runtime or pure power depending on what you are doing in the garden. If you are just trimming up the edge of your lawn then you probably don't need the extra power and will be better going for more runtime. If on the other hand, you are trying to strim through some thick couch grass then you will definitely want the extra power.

Double Action Trigger

This is a safety feature to make sure you don't start the strimmer by accident. You have to push the grey button in before pulling the trigger, if you don't the strimmer won't start.

Just a nice little safety feature to have and means you cant start this without really meaning to.

V20 Battery & Runtime

The V20 range of batteries and power tools is actually really good. I have the cordless drill, impact driver and multi-tool and love them all. The batteries use high-end Samsung cells and last a long time.

Stanley Black and Decker own DeWALT and this range of power tools uses a lot of the same tech as DeWALT does.

In terms of runtime, I was getting 15-20 minutes of non-stop strimming in the high-speed setting while going through thick grass. So this is the toughest job you can expect it to do and I was still getting good run time.

With easier tasks and in the slower setting expect it to last for longer. The batteries have a charge indicator built-in so you can see how much juice you have left.

Using the Strimmer

It's nice and light and can even be used one-handed as I did in order to film the strimmer in action. Compared to the petrol strimmer I had before this it is night and day in terms of ease of use. The petrol strimmer obviously had more power but after a few hours, your arms would start to ache due to the weight.

But with this strimmer, you could use it all day and not get tired. It only weighs around 2 and a half kilos!

Auto Releasing Cord

Now we get to the one feature that I am a little dubious about. The auto-release cord. What happens is the cord is automatically sent out by the machine whenever it starts to get short which means you never have to bother with it. What I am not sure one yet is how much cord it pushes out and how often, this could get wasteful in my eyes if it is always pushing out a new cord but I will have to wait and see.