Cordless electric chainsaw testing and review – Part 1 – which battery chain saw is right for you?

[Music] hi folks today we're going to talk about chainsaws any homestead that has any sort of trees needs a chainsaw so why electric chainsaws first of all they're quiet you'll see that these run in the 80 to 90 decibel range where the gas one at the end of the video runs over 100 decibels over 100 decibels means that if you ran that saw for more than 15 minutes in a day without earmuffs you could suffer ear damage second of all you can make electricity it's hard to make gasoline you can make ethanol but that's another story thirdly i don't like keeping that many little motors running especially with alcohol fuel these days just cleaning carburetors especially on stuff that you don't use that often and i don't i'll go through cycles where i use the saws a lot and then i don't use the sauce for a while i put them away for the winter or something and i just don't the less carburetors that i have to maintain the better the electric saws start every time put a charged battery on it pull the trigger starts there's no yank in the cord to try to get it and then it starts and then it stumbles and then you know the high jet works but the load doesn't and it stalls when you put it down there's none of that stuff they just work so yeah especially on the smaller saws i am a convert i love having the electric saw around the mill it's awesome for the way that i use a chainsaw around the mill for trimming ends for bucking logs for cutting up any slab wood it's just awesome i love them for firewood too because i have a sawmill i usually mill all the bigger wood so all this all our firewood is made from you know 10 inch and under wood and uh these saws all work great on that that size would so in this video i'm going to look at three saws a makita 36 volt a still 36 volt and an ego 56 volt i'll do a speed test and a sound level test for each saw and then i'll talk about the features and benefits of each saw at the end of the video i'll do a head-to-head between a couple of the electric saws and as a bonus i've added in a gas saw a comparison to a still ms-290 you'll see that the cordless electric saws have come a long way and they're actually comparable to gas speed wise in some situations i also wanted to mention that in this video all of these chains are sharp and all of the batteries are straight off the charger on all these tests [Music] this saw is the makita xcu02 this is a 36 volt saw they do it by using two 18 volt batteries same batteries you would use on a makita drill these are five amp hours each these makita bl 1850 b batteries are listed at 90 watt hours they do that by having 10 18 650 cells makita normally uses sony cells the saw is listed as a 12 inch bar but it's really about 10 and a half inches of usable it takes a 3 8 low profile chain i believe there's 46 drivers on this chain any decent saw shop any local place can sharpen this chain you can buy a makita replacement chain or an oregon or any other brand low profile 3 8 will fit this saw that chain will cost you 15 to 19 depending on where you buy it this saw with the batteries weighs in at pounds this is a top handle saw which is different from the other saws that we'll look at today you notice it balances right there the overall length on this i think is about 22 and a half inches the bar like i said is ten and a half inches this saw bare tool no batteries is 199 dollars nikita also sells this saw with the two batteries the charger and a cordless angle grinder for 319. these batteries are the same batteries used on makita power tools so whether you have a angle grinder or a drill or a driver it's all the same battery so if you already have a makita line of holes this is a good saw to get because you can buy it as a bare tool like i said for a 199 at 10 pounds the saw is the lightest one that we are testing today i have friends that use this saw as a pack saw for going in the woods and cutting trails and stuff like that take the bar off throw it in their pack you do want to watch out this particular saw tends to leak bar oil so when you do remove the bar put a little rubber strip or something in there to plug the hole where the oil would come out this saw as well as the other two we're looking at today are toolless tensioning and bar removal this saw has a electric and i believe it's also physical break an oil adjustment here the amount of oil that oils your chain it also has a ring a little ring here so it can be used as a climbing saw it is the top handle design so you could clip it on a lanyard [Music] this saw is the still msa 200c this is a 12 inch saw the bar actually measures 12 inches it's about 29 and a half inches overall for the hole saw again two-less chain replacement tool-less tension again it has a physical and electronic brake an oil filled just like any other still but a battery goes in there battery we have here today is an ap 300 the charger we have is an al-101 this ap 300 battery is 36 volts at 6 amp hours they're rating it at 227 watt hours total that's compared to the 180 watt hours total on the makita and the 280 watt hours total on the ego this saw is 11.8 pounds with the battery is a rear handle saw it balances little nose high with this bar hanging from the front handle this saw takes a 14 inch chain it's 72 drive links this is still pico chain very small quarter inch 43 thousandths drivers this is a proprietary chain what i find is that a lot of places will not sharpen them this chain is about 35 no matter where you buy it for this little chain this saw as a bare tool 349 dollars still sells it with the battery and the charger separately this battery is 190 the charger is about 60 dollars so this saw as it sits here today is 600 dollars [Applause] [Music] this saw is the ego cs 1800 they sell this as an 18 inch saw it's really got about 17 inches of usable bar this saw overall is about 34 and a half inches long it takes ego's line of 56 volt batteries if you buy it with the battery it comes with a 5 amp hour pretty hefty battery so that's 5 amp hours at 56 volts which makes this saw balance pretty neutral from the top handle the chain on this saw is regular or oregon bar and chain this is a 3 8 low profile by 50 000 drivers there's 62 drivers on this chain so this chain will cost you about 13 14 this saw weighs fourteen point eight pounds with the five amp hour battery if you have any other ego tools you can use the batteries from those we haven't have a line trimmer so we have a two and a half amp hour battery so if i wanted to i could swap out batteries and use the smaller one it it will balance a little a little bit nose heavy with the two and a half amp hour battery you can use up to a 10 amp hour battery on this saw the cool thing about the ego is that with any of those batteries all the way up to the 10 amp hour battery you can buy a separate backpack and put the weight of the battery on your back so the saw becomes much lighter these ego batteries are also 18650 cell based batteries they use samsung and sanyo cells what we've got here is 28 cells wired in both series and parallel the cells and what ego calls their arc lithium batteries are arranged in an arc and they have venting all the cells are individually wrapped in a phase change device the idea being that it helps cool and maintain a consistent battery temperature throughout the cells this saw has an oiler here break just like the others tool-less chain tensioning and adjustment this removes the chain and tensions it all in one there's not a separate chain adjustment one thing that this saw has that's different than all the others is it actually has a light on it that you can use at two different brightnesses this saw is sold as a bare tool you can find it for about two hundred 250 dollars as a bear tool this saw is 349 dollars with a 5 amp hour battery and a 210 watt charger i'm shooting this in august of 2020 and it's just been announced that lowe's is picking up the ego line home depot is dropping the ego line and picking up somebody else's electric line so i believe going forward you're going to be able to get ego at lowe's and ace hardware you can see that these two saws are pretty evenly matched for speed the still has a much smaller chain and i suspect that it turns a little faster but its power does seem to fade as you make multiple cuts the ego seems to have more torque from the start and its motor does not seem to fade at all the still is a smaller saw so it's not that surprising that you can stall it the ego definitely seems to have a more powerful motor more torque it's you can't stall it [Music] so as a comparison this is an ms290 this is a gas saw you notice it's quite loud over 100 decibels you'll also notice that it's not faster than the much smaller still electric saw and that would make it about the same speed as the 18 inch ego saw this is a bone stock ms290 the muffler is intact the ms290 weighs in at 17.4 pounds with a half tank of gas and a half tank of bar oil so which saw is right for you it depends on what's important to you if you want the lightest saw and you don't care about speed and you already own makita tools then the makita saw is probably for you i have friends that use that for trail work and it works well for them if you're a professional arborist and you already have still tools and you want to get your tools all serviced at the same dealer and you maybe want the still pole saw or hedge trimmers or some other electric options then maybe the still saw's for you but you're going to pay for it all the still stuff is pretty expensive for me i bought the ego it started with their battery technology i think their battery technology is more advanced than all the others their batteries even while they're being stored have a timer built in so that they will self-discharge after a certain number of days down to a prescribed amount so they keep their state of charge in the sweet spot that maximizes battery health for the lithium cells that they have in them the other part of it was that the ego tools all the batteries fit all their tools they're completely compatible across their line so whether you're buying a chainsaw or a line trimmer or lawn mower or snowblower they all use the same battery and they make a couple of great lawn mowers and my wife really wanted a lawn mower that she could start she was having trouble starting the gas lawn mowers with the ego she just puts the battery in pushes the button pulls the thing and goes never never a problem we also purchased their self-feeding line trimmer we both love the way that it self-loads the line you don't have to take the head apart and wind the line around it and get it all coiled fight with it and everything you just stick it in push the button it winds itself it's pretty awesome design it takes 95 000 line and it seems almost as powerful if not just as powerful as the still gas fs 86 line trimmer that i've had for years i haven't even started the 86 this year and now that i've modified the ego line trimmer to take a table saw blade for brush cutting i'm not sure i'll ever use the still i would probably sell the still and buy the ego multi-head system so i can eventually get the pole saw and other attachments the one thing about the ego that i think is a negative is that it has a delay in start when you pull the trigger there's a little ramp up in the speed and it's just it's longer than the other two electric saws that we're looking at today it's something they're doing in their speed control probably to limit the amount of amps that in rush current on the saw i wish it was adjustable i wish you could change that because it takes a little bit getting used to and it makes you cut a little bit differently but once you get used to it it's not so bad but when you first pick up the saw it's definitely something that if you've sawed a lot you you notice the cordless saws can be just as fast as gas obviously they will not last as long as a gas saw will on a tank of gas there's no comparison to the energy density in gasoline as there is to a lithium-ion battery but if you have multiple batteries the batteries nowadays charge fast enough that it's really not an issue i would highly recommend that you use the factory recommended style of chain the chains on these saws more so than on gas saws really make a difference i've seen some youtube videos there was one by a very popular youtuber where he swapped out the chain on an electric dewalt saw and he put in a skiptooth chain and then he complained about the vibration on that saw i think he's missing the point there these electric saws have more torque than their two-stroke gas counterparts so they can run chains with more teeth on them and they run smoother with those chains and they cut faster so if you buy one of these electric saws just use the style chain that's recommended for that saw the other thing you'll notice about electric saws is the torque they've got good torque right from the start that is why the kevlar chaps are not guaranteed with electric saws the way that kevlar chaps work on a gas saw is they peel off strings of kevlar and they get wound around the clutch in the sprocket and it stalls the saw because they don't have enough torque the electric saws still have torque even at low rpm so if you look at the warnings on the chaps they'll protect you for sure but they're not guaranteed against getting cut with an electric saw because if you put one on your leg and pulled the trigger and kept pushing it could go through so just be careful yes definitely we'll still keep a couple of gas saws but um you know maybe maybe someday if i can get a bigger electric saw maybe i won't um i'm i'm pretty uh converted i really do like them if you guys like this video please like and subscribe turn on notifications and if you'd like to see me review any other electric saws i know there's dewalt ones out there i know there's milwaukee as well i think green works and some other folks have them so if you'd like to see me review any of the other ones just comment below thanks [Music] you

Channel: Normstead

Views: 37,367

Rating: 4.9412303 out of 5

Keywords: Makita, XCU02, Stihl, MSA 200C, msa200c, EGO, CS1800, MS 290, MS290, MSA 120, MSA 140, MSA 160, MSA 161, MSA 200, MSA 220, cordless, battery, CS1400, CS1600, Greenworks, 80V, 60V, 40V, DeWalt, DCCS620, DCCS670, Milwaukee, M18, 2727, Ryobi, RY40530, RY40550, CS60L, P547, XCU04, P549, CS1401, XCU03, Black+Decker, Black, Decker, LCS1020, Echo, CCS-58V, XCU09, LCS1240, WEN, 40417, XCU07

Id: CyD2C4Gn6Gk

Length: 18min 14sec (1094 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 22 2020