The battery lasted a good 30 minutes. The only downside was that it took unusually long to recharge: four hours. How long does the battery last? For cordless strimmers, this is really important as you'll ideally want a strimmer that lets you do the job without stopping to charge. Unless you're doing a major lawn cut, a modern battery-powered strimmer should have plenty of juice to last you a good tidy up of even larger lawn areas.

The power of the motor in the strimmer determines how fast it spins and so how well it will cut through vegetation. Power is generally measured in cc for petrol engines, watts for electric ones and volts for batteries. For batteries, it’s also worth considering the amp hours as this dictates how long it will last. Cutting width is given in cm in the product descriptions and this tells us the length of cut the blade or string can do. A smaller cutting width will mean it takes a lot longer to cover a certain area. For string strimmers remember to consider that the string will snap on occasion so the cutting width may vary as you work.As the table shows, there's a big difference in both our best and worst Which? test scores and the customer scores from our latest survey.

Keep a look out for strimmers with bump and auto-feeds, which push out more line automatically, saving you the time and effort of fiddling with the spool. How we test the best cordless strimmers

The best cordless grass trimmers and strimmers to buy in 2023

There are no power cords or extension leads to get tangled up in, no expensive to replace trimmer line and no smelly petrol. Just charge Lawn Barber for up to 50 minutes of cordless, handheld trimming. They are designed for general, light tasks around the garden such as trimming around the fence and edging the lawn. What's the difference between a grass trimmer and a strimmer? Battery would not hold charge Lithium-ion batteries eventually lose their ability to hold charge. Store the battery separately from your trimmer and with a minimum of 40% charge remaining. If you want a grass trimmer for simple tasks, such as tidying the edges of the lawn by a fence or neatening straggly grass, then you won't need a model with lots of features. But for anything more, the following additions could prove invaluable: We found it split a fair amount – mainly because we were heavy handed near stone edges – but that wasn’t an issue thanks to the auto feed. Take a little pressure off the power trigger and the spool feeds more line through – this was a truly brilliant feature that made the job non-stop, reducing battery usage and, of course, getting it done sooner.