The big advantage of using a battery-powered string trimmer is convenience and how fast you can get to work. There is also less mess without having to use gasoline and oil. And, either the unit runs or it doesn’t.
Like any product, the laws of economics come into play - you get what you pay for. There are lots of options in the market, including very cheaply priced units that border on being disposable - they will last about a season or so, and then into the garbage they go. On the other hand, there are high-end units that are heavily constructed, and in some cases, use higher-powered battery systems. It pays to consider how much you’re going to use the tool and the features that you want to pay for.
We chose the DeWalt® DCST922P1 setup. This comes with the 14” trimmer, a 5Ah Li-Ion battery, charger, and 0.080” (2.0 mm) trimmer string pre-installed in the bump-feed trimmer head.
There were several reasons for our choice. First, we already have several DeWALT 20v cordless tools, along with an array of batteries and charging bases. It made sense to make use of what we already had is we could. Second, the overall quality of the tool for the price. The tool appears sturdy, and with the folding feature to allow the tool to be 40% shorter when fully extended, that was a plus. The head is easy to load, but time will tell how much we like it. Lastly, the package deal made sense. DeWALT (and other manufacturers) PURPOSELY do special pricing on kits to get you to have even more investment in their suite of tools That was the case here. In June 2020, the bare tool would cost $149. The kit was $199. For $50 more, we got the tool, 5 Ah battery, and the charger. I have plenty of chargers, but you can’t have too many batteries! And, the battery alone in the took aisle was priced at about $140. Crazy, but they know what they are doing.
While we have just begun to use the tool as of the day of filming, we do have some initial observations. To begin with, the tool feels good in the hands, and is moderate weight (tool only is about 8 lbs, add a couple more for the battery). I DIDN’T like how the tool was balanced with the shaft handle installed as illustrated, so I reversed it and moved it below the folding knuckle and that’s just about right! Once attached to the shaft, the handle won’t rotate, which I REALLY like. It makes the machine much easier to handle.
As for running out of battery charge, we didn’t have a problem. You can run the unit either on high (0-6000 rpm) or low (0-4600). We have a very large yardscape and we had plenty of power in a single 5 Ah battery to do the job. We used both speeds, depending on how heavy the cut.
Also, the machine will feel differently initially than the typical gas-powered string trimmer. Why? With a gas unit, the engine is at the top of the unit. With this unit, the battery is at the top, but a brushless motor is at the bottom. Getting the handle placed correctly makes a big difference in how balanced the tool feels and the effort you’ll need to expend to use it.
So far, so good! It’s fast, quiet, easy to get to work, and DirtFarmer Maggie will use it as well. That just wasn’t the case with the heavier gas-powered unit we’ve had.
We’ll update this info after a season of use and let you know our honest observations.
Lastly, I have a gripe. This tool, like most that are readily available, was made in China. We could get into all sorts of politics and such, but that isn’t our emphasis. We do think we should do business with countries that have mutual best interests. We’re challenged to find evidence that China has acted in the global best interest, even with the Covid-19 controversy taken out of the conversation.
Let us be clear. We are not anti-other countries or cultures. We just think that we should develop and support national, regional, and local industries and economies if at all possible. That holds true no matter where in the world you live. DeWALT, and other major tool companies, how about more seriously investing back into your national economy? How about doing industrial development projects to get the supply chain for your products coming from much nearer to home?
That’s the way we DirtFarmers see it.
Hey, Dirt Farmer Jay here from DirtFarmerJay.com.
Well, Dirt Farmer Maggie and I made the jump over to
a cordless 14-inch string trimmer from DeWalt.
What do we think about it?
We'll do an unboxing, and we'll give you our initial impressions.
Stay tuned.
Hey, Dirt Farmer Jay here from DirtFarmerJay.com.
If you've looked much in our makerspace,
you'll always see a lot of DeWalt material in the background.
No, they don't sponsor us.
It's just one of the tool systems we use,
but it's one of my favorite ones,
and they have a whole suite of tools
that use the same charging bases, same batteries,
and one of those tools is this new 14-inch folding string trimmer.
It comes with, in this particular system,
this model number or this kit number, DCST922P1.
It comes with both a charger base like this.
It comes with a five-amp-hour battery.
It comes with the entire tool as well
and that first charge of string in the bump head that's on it.
Now, something you're going to notice right away
before we get in the unboxing, here's what's real interesting.
This is the carton, right?
That's the length of it.
This is the string trimmer.
How do you get this in this?
Well, the secret is right here.
There's a folding knuckle right here that not only makes it smaller to ship
and to be in the packaging for the consumer packaging,
but also if your space is limited
or you don't want to use as much space
or you're taking this and hauling it someplace,
you can simply undo this latch.
It is really intuitive.
I'm not going to do it because it is self-explaining once you have it.
This will just fold in half and now you have a much shorter unit to carry.
So that is the folding feature that's on it.
Well, let's walk you through the unboxing
and what you're going to encounter once you get one of these.
All right, so the first thing we're going to do is go ahead and open the box.
Just cut the end open and as you open it,
the first thing you're going to encounter is an inner liner
that allows you to open it a little bit further
and you're going to see the motor unit
that's on the base of the cutting head area.
And as you pull the unit out,
you'll see the knuckle, the folding knuckle right near the end
as you pull it out allows, again, as we said,
this longer extended unit to be in a smaller package
when you get it off the shelf.
Next thing you're going to encounter is the guard
that goes around the string head cutter down there
that will be affixed a little bit later.
And then the handle that will be affixed to the shaft.
When you go a little bit further in
and just keep pulling out the inner liner,
the next thing you're going to see is the motor head itself,
which is a cast piece,
appears to be a metal of some kind,
not sure what it is, aluminum, whatever,
but it's painted with a bright silver.
Pretty nice finish on that.
And then you get into, in the particular kit that we bought,
both the charger and the battery.
And they supply, in this particular kit,
a 5 amp hour battery.
Now, it should be noted that this particular one,
when we purchased it, comes with,
and you can see it right on there,
that you get both the 5 amp battery, the charger,
but if you bought the bare tools kit,
which is a different serial number,
at the time of purchase in early summer 2020,
the bare tool kit was $149,
the kit with the battery and the charger was $199.
So for $50 more,
you get a charger and you get this battery.
Now, I got plenty of chargers.
I don't need more chargers,
but I can always use more batteries.
And if I go down their tool aisle,
at the retailer where I got this,
maybe the Orange Big Box Home Improvement Center,
you're going to find this battery on the shelf
for $120 to $150.
And so you can get both the charger and this
for another $50.
They know what they're doing.
They package it.
DeWalt wants you to have as many of these tools
and have you committed to their system as possible.
They're not dumb.
And I know what they're doing,
but I went ahead and bought the full kit.
Next thing you're going to get out of there
is the instruction manual that walks you through
everything about how to register the piece of equipment,
some of its basic maintenance,
charging the battery for the first time,
extending and opening it,
affixing the handle to it, and so forth.
All that's there and it's a worthwhile read
and a good reference piece to keep on hand.
The next thing you need to do is prepare
the string head itself for use.
And so you need to untape the strings
that are pre-installed.
The tails are sticking out about five inches
on each side of the bump head.
And so you need to untape those and get that ready to go.
And now it is time to put on the handle.
Now something you should notice,
you'll see here that I'm pointing at
where they recommend you put the handle.
And that, on this unit,
is actually up here above the knuckle
and with it tilted that way.
And in the next picture here,
you see that I actually installed it,
and here's the finished result here,
the other way around.
I went below the knuckle, reversed it, and installed it.
Why? The balance seems a lot better.
And some other people online mentioned this,
that where they suggest you put it,
seems like it's a little high.
You're crunching your arm to hold it here.
That lower grip with the handle leaned back
seemed to work really well.
And so that's where I've affixed it,
and I really like it.
Another thing here, as you install the screws in,
and I just used a T-handle hex wrench,
as you install the screws,
there is a solid grip that forms around the tool,
and you can see it right here,
that does not allow this to rotate.
If you push it one way or another,
the whole tool rotates.
On another model I had of a gas-powered string trimmer,
that was a loose slip fit.
It wasn't loose, but it was a friction fit,
and I found that to be really irritating.
When you're trying to rotate the head a certain way,
it would tend to give.
You're constantly adjusting that.
This is really sure and positive,
so I really like it.
When you go to put on, in the next step,
putting on the blade guard,
or the string guard at the bottom,
you'll see that there are two holes there,
where you're going to fix the couple of screws
that are supplied.
I go ahead and put a little thread lock on it.
There's some goo that they put on it.
But you don't want to lose those screws,
and they're down underneath,
and who wants to go chase them?
You could probably buy replacements,
but who needs the headache?
So I go overboard,
and it's cheap to add some thread lock on it,
and then go ahead and drive them in.
The last thing you need to do
is make sure that you understand
how the bump head looks here.
You can see there are two marks
on the side of the bump head.
When you rotate those around
into where they're aligned,
like this shot,
then what you'll see is
it is ready to load additional string.
In this system,
it takes about 20 foot
of two millimeter string cord.
This is an aftermarket,
where I bought some more here.
But as you can see here,
that's a two millimeter in metric.
In imperial size,
it would be .080 inches.
Common size,
and something you should know
if you really want to keep
your cord in good condition.
I could put this inside a Ziploc bag,
put a wad of paper towel in beside it
that's moist,
or some cotton balls,
or some water in the bag,
and believe it or not,
even though these are plastic core,
it's highly recommended
you keep the strings moisturized
with a little bit of humidity in there.
They'll tend to be less brittle
and last longer as you use it.
Well, we've put this to work,
and as you can see here,
I'm doing a little bit of trimming
around the front of the house here.
This particular area has different rocks
that are bordering the beds here,
and the trimmer works really nicely.
It's well balanced.
It's pretty quiet.
It's not overly heavy.
I would say it's about 10 pounds total,
eight pounds on the trimmer,
two pounds roughly in the battery,
and as you can see here,
here's the battery port right here.
I'm going to go ahead and take this battery,
and we're going to go ahead
and slide the battery in.
That's a five amp hour.
We'll go ahead and slide it in
and pop it in,
and when you do so,
this is now ready to run,
and we'll go ahead,
and for your listening pleasure,
go ahead and fire this up,
but let me show you first what you do.
There's a double on this side.
There's a little bit of a safety.
You push this in,
and you pull the trigger,
and when you do,
this is what you get, okay?
Now, that was being run at high speed.
Let me run it at low speed
so you can hear the difference.
I was able to trim most of my yard
using the lower speed,
but there was a couple places
I wanted to speed it up a little bit.
It was taking a little long.
I jumped it over to high speed,
took care of business.
What about battery life?
Well, we have a large yard.
We have around 15,000 square foot of turf,
a lot of edging,
a lot of walk-through areas,
and I was able to do the whole yard
on a single charge in the battery
and had plenty to spare,
and I used both settings as I went
depending where I was,
and as far as the string in the head,
didn't run out of that either.
Worked really well.
It cut very quickly,
and I was to work immediately
because once you put the battery in,
it runs.
You don't have to fiddle with it.
I was a gas-powered string trimmer guy
for a long time.
I think I'm a convert.
Now, in all honesty,
we've just started using this,
so these are all first impressions
of this promise I make to you.
At the end of this season,
we'll come back and update
the description below
and tell you exactly
what our experience has been.
The good, the bad, and the ugly,
and you can make a decision for yourself
whether or not this package
makes sense for you.
We think it's very promising
and will be likely a great go-to.
And guess what?
It's got Dirt Farmer Maggie
starting to do more of the string trimming.
She hated that other one.
It was too heavy.
So, hey.
So, until the next time,
this is Dirt Farmer Jay.
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Thanks for watching today.
Until the next time,
this is Dirt Farmer Jay
from DirtFarmerJay.com.
