Best strimmer or weed eater 2023: cutting edge tech to buy today

While lawnmowers do a pretty good job of cutting large areas, even robot mowers can’t go right up to the very edge of a wall or fence – and if you’re looking to give a smaller lawn a quick trim you don’t necessarily want to drag out a full-sized mower for a few minutes of cutting. Here’s our pick of the best strimmer options (it’s a portmanteau of string trimmers!) and grass edge trimmers to buy today.

Grass strimmers (otherwise known as weed eaters) and trimmers are ideal for those smaller tasks, and ones with rotating heads are brilliant for getting your lawn edges nice and sharp too.

How to choose a grass trimmer or strimmer

Some people start by looking at prices. We start with the weight. A kilo here or there doesn’t sound like a lot, but if you’ve got a lot of lawn to edge it can mean the difference between arms that ache and arms that don’t. It’s also a lot easier to manoeuvre a lighter model than one you’re struggling to lift.

If you’re tall or small, it’s a very good idea to look for a model with an adjustable handle angle or a telescopic shaft. A strimmer that makes you stretch or stoop is going to give you a sore back if you’re using it for a while.

There are two key kinds of strimmers. Some use a nylon line on a spool, which delivers a wide cutting area but can be fiddly to replace; others use little plastic blades, which are easier to swap but which wear out quickly and cut much smaller areas.

And some have fixed metal blades like lawnmowers. Which one you choose is largely down to personal preference, but if you’re going to be strimming larger areas the nylon thread will cut more quickly.

Our pick of the best strimmers and grass trimmers to buy today

WORX WG163E

Why buy a trimmer and an edger when one tool can do both brilliantly? That’s the pitch here: this traditional nylon line strimmer has a 30cm cutting width and rotates to become a wheeled edger for precise and attractive results. It uses PowerShare batteries that you can use across WORX’s garden tools and power tools to save money and be nicer to the environment, and it’s fast and easy to adjust the height to suit any user. At 3.5kg it’s not too heavy either.

GTech GT50

If you prefer plastic blades to a nylon line, this lightweight trimmer from GTech is a good option. It’s a strimmer and edge trimmer with an 18V battery that’ll deliver around 30 minutes of cutting, and like other firms’ batteries it’s swappable with other GTech tools. The plastic blades are very cheap to buy and easy to fit, and at just 1.85kg it’s extremely lightweight. You can adjust the angle of the handle for the most comfortable operation.

WORX WG186E

Now this is clever. In addition to swappable batteries, this WORX trimmer has swappable heads – so in addition to being a traditional nylon line strimmer with a huge 38cm cutting area you can swap the head and turn it into a brush cutter, a hedge trimmer, a pole saw, a cultivator, a pole edger or a sweeper too. The brushless motor has variable speeds control and the split shaft design is easy to adjust for comfort.

Powerbase 550W

• Buy the Powerbase 550W from Homebase

This is the cheapest strimmer in our line-up, and it’s a typically solid product from Homebase with a rotating, multi-position head for edges and around trees and shrubs. It uses a nylon cutting line and has a 30cm cutting area, and the telescopic height adjustment means you can use it whether you’re quite tall or quite small. The downside is that this is a corded model, and while 10m is fine for small to medium gardens you’ll need an extension if you need to go further. The upside, of course, is that you can strim all day long without worrying about running out of battery.

WORX WG184E

Do you need a professional-grade trimmer without a professional-grade price? Then this WORX model is a good choice. It doubles up the batteries for nearly 40V of power, delivering petrol-like performance without the noise or the fumes, and it uses professional-grade nylon that’s much tougher and less prone to breakage than consumer-grade spools. That double battery does add to the weight – the WG184E comes in at 3.9kg – but the payoff is the massively increased power that’ll make a huge difference to your cutting speed and the time it’ll take to get everything just-so.

Stiga GT 500e

This 48V trimmer is the most powerful trimmer here. It has serious cutting power, but as the battery is only 2Ah you’ll need to recharge it after about 20 minutes. A fast charge brings it back to life in around 50 minutes. It’s very adjustable and comfortable to use, and because there’s just one big battery rather than two it manages to come in at a very reasonable 3.0kg so it’s not going to tire you out too much during your twenty minutes of trimming – although 3kg is still quite a lot to lift when there’s no shoulder strap to spread the load. The nylon line cuts up to 30cm wide and that massive battery cuts through tough grass as if it were butter, but having to buy both battery and charger separately means the Stiga is more expensive than it looks.

Vonhaus G-Series

If you’re looking for a really cheap cordless strimmer, skip past Vonhaus’s F-Series – its battery isn’t great and it isn’t adjustable – and go for the G-Series instead, which is only £10 more but is a much better budget buy. Its 20V battery has much better battery life – 50 minutes – as well as more cutting power, the handle is telescopic and the head rotates to take care of lawn edges. With a 25cm cutting area and nylon blades the G-Series makes short work of clumpy grass.