Saker 20v Cordless Hedge & Grass Trimmer

Hi, I'm Mike with House on the Mend and in this video we're going to be reviewing the Saker 20 volt cordless electric hedge trimmer and grass trimmer. So let's get started. Now I'm not paid nor sponsored by Saker. I did previously review their mini electric chainsaw which is excellent and works on the same battery platform. So Saker merely reached back out to me and offered to send me this device for free for my independent review. We're going to do all sorts of testing. I'm going to take you through an overview of exactly what comes in the package, how to work it. We're going to charge the battery. Then we're going to test the battery life and then I'm going to put both of these attachments through all their paces. So if you find this video helpful will you please give it a thumbs up and also please consider subscribing. I do a lot of tool reviews like this for you and it's really simple. You just log in, click subscribe or if you follow me on Rumble just click follow. All right let's get to the unpackaging. All right here's everything that comes in the package. You have the unit itself with the attached grass shear. I love that both shears come with scabbards. Then you have the hedge trimmer shear. Now the glaring thing I notice is how short it is. It's about nine and a half inches, actually about nine inches of cutting space. So that's less than half of your standard 20 to 22 inch hedge trimmer. So that's a real consideration how long it's going to take you to cut if you have a lot of shrubs like we do here. You get a 20 volt 1.5 amp hour battery. That is the same size battery that came in the Saker mini electric chainsaw that I previously reviewed. This little guy right here who's awesome. I don't know why they changed the coloring from this nice blue to this kind of pea green color. But one good thing is these two batteries are interchangeable with these tools which is great. Another improvement I noticed right away, something I commented on on my first review of the mini electric chainsaw that they have now added, is a battery life indicator. That is fantastic. Taking a look at the main unit, there are three buttons on the handle itself and then two down here that we'll talk about in a second. These buttons up here, you have your safety so you push forward and then pull the trigger and that activates the unit. So that's nice. And then this one here is to pivot. You have one, two stops of pivot. And I can see that being nice if you're actually coming down and cutting grass so that you don't have to be, you know, down on your hands and knees. You can get a little bit of angle for that. So that's pretty cool. The one thing I did notice about this though, you hear that? It's floppy. Whichever section you put it in, it's got some slop in it. Now these two buttons down here are to remove the grass shears and switch right over to the hedge trimming shears. These little gears have to line up. So like that. Definitely not a quick change. Let's see. This isn't safe but maybe if I pivot it around a little, it'll fall in there. There. Wow, that is a lot harder than it should be. Now take a look at this. In shipping, this sticker here got all chewed up and there's also deep scratches all over the base of this grass shear. So their packaging is substandard. A scabbard is really hard to put on. It seemed like it came off a lot easier. Do we have to maybe pivot it a bit? No, it's just stupidly difficult to put on. Wow. And then this one is like perfect. Hold on, it was my fault. I had it upside down. You're actually supposed to have the open slot be for these bolts on top. And once you do that, it comes right on and off. But you can see if you do it the wrong way, you're going to have plastic everywhere. Well, since the battery has all three available bars showing, it shouldn't take too long to charge it. All you have to do is plug it in and then there's a little like stereo jack right here. It goes right up to the top and we get no indication on the battery itself. But as you can see right here, let me slide that up for you. The charger turns red when you plug it in, so it will indicate green once it's fully charged. So I'm going to set my timer and see how long that takes. All right, green light means we are fully charged. It took one hour and there is no discernible heat from the charging process. All right, let's see how long the battery runs when we have the grass clippers on under no load. Still going strong after 30 minutes. The head is up to 128 degrees, 129 degrees. But the battery is ambient temperature out here in the garage. Finally starting to wane after almost two hours. Temperature is about 144, 147. Battery is still the ambient temperature in the garage. All right, pretty impressive runtime of just over two hours. And we'll take some temperature readings. Looks like we're up almost 140 degrees up here, 142 and only about 96 degrees on the battery, which is our ambient temperature here in the Las Vegas Valley right now. So that's impressive. All right, I'm going to lubricate the blade with a little bit of silicone lubricant here. Good. I like to start at this little shrub that's right outside the window where I edit my videos. And the reason is this stuff is really wispy and so it's an easy first test. It's not very woody. And let's see what happens. All right, so unlike when we're in an enclosed room and in my little light box, you can really get a feel for the noise coming out of a gardening tool when you're outside using it. And my first impression is this is super quiet. I really like that. I do feel this looseness in the adjustable neck up here flopping around a lot, and it it's a little bit unsettling. It'll take some getting used to, I'm sure. I love that it's one handed. It's very well balanced. I don't feel that it's pulling down too much. However, if you look right around the area where you do hold it, it is weighted forward. It's probably more balanced with the grass clipper on, but it's so lightweight. It really doesn't bother you that much. I really like being able to use hedge trimmers one handed because when you get close to the stucco walls or the screening material of a window, you want to pull back the shrubbery to cut it because if you come up against it with these sharp blades, you're very likely obviously to damage the screen or the stucco. So if you see here with one hand, I can pull stuff forward get in there really easily while the other hand is doing the cutting. All right, everybody passes this test. Let's move on and try some other things that are a little bit more stout. All right, this euonymus is really not cutting very well. Maybe it's the size of the opening with these bulbous tips on here, but I'm not impressed. It literally won't go in there to cut that. Box elder, no problem. How about mock orange? Yeah, not very good. I love the little purple flowers on this green cloud. Yeah, the new growth that sticks up over the top is no problem. How about these guys sneaking right up over the top of this wall? Let's switch over to the grass clipper. That went in a little better. No, it's just pushing it away. Same thing. It handles the really wispy stuff just as good as the hedge trimmer. So if we're walking by and these feather palms here are all in head level, can we just make a quick cut without going back and getting shears? Yeah, it's got to work at it. Oops. So if it's struggling to cut something, if you can hold on to that and make it more taut, it goes right through. See that? Interesting. Oh, stalled out again. This is all fake turf, so I don't have a lot of grass to try it out on, but let's go over here to our lantana and see if we can dress up this overgrowth here. Yeah, no problem at all. I think it would definitely go quicker if I put the hedge trimming attachment back on it. Much better. All right, I'm anxious to pivot the head up like that and cut some of this low-lying tumbleweed. Yeah, that does real good. How about this old dead woody stuff that used to be tumbleweeds? Easy. Got it all. So I've gone around the entirety of our yard and I've done some minor trimming projects here and there, and I think that's what this tool is going to be best suited for. As you can see in this video here, the front of our house is a shrub-a-palooza. It is the testing ground for most of your average-sized cordless hedge trimmers, and I think a project this daunting would be really unsatisfying with hedge trimmers this short. So instead, I think this one is best suited for much smaller yards or if you have one little topiary you're wanting to work on. Just a couple shrubs out front of your house or in the back, and you don't think you need a full-size one with a handle up front. You really like the thought of being able to operate the tool one-handed. This would be perfect for you. Another thing that leads me to believe it's best suited for smaller projects is that it's a little bit underpowered. The openings are purposely smaller than normal hedge trimmers, and it struggles getting woodier things in there or bushier items in there, but it did great on our rosemary, on our green clouds, on our mock orange, and the little wispy trumpet vine, as you saw. The battery power is fantastic. You know, two hours of continuous runtime is more than most people are ever going to put a tool through, and it only took about a little over two hours to fully charge the battery, as you can see in this snapshot here. So not bad when you're considering that it's just a little radio jack charger, and it never heated up the battery, so I wouldn't have any worries about charging indoors. I did enjoy the capability of moving the head so you could get down low. The only problem is I just wish there wasn't so much slop, but as the tool's vibrating, I guess you really don't notice it that much, but it is something that was just a touch unsettling for me. One other thing that's a con that needs to be mentioned is the difficulty I found nearly every time I switch between the hedge trimmer and the grass trimmer. It's very simple to remove, but getting the next one on is almost always a fight. It feels like you're breaking it or the gears are jamming. There should be a keystone or something that makes that transition easier, maybe some sort of a break where it always stops in the same spot. Something to make that transition require less effort. Battery platform. The Saker Mini Electric Chainsaw is the number one selling Mini Electric Chainsaw on Amazon the last time I checked, which is pretty impressive when you consider how much competition there is. So since many people are going to already have this battery, it's great that Saker is coming out with very capable small tools to continue that kind of small electric outdoor program of tools, and I commend them for that. I also want to thank Saker for reaching back out to me and offering to send me this tool for my independent review with no preconceived agreement on what I was going to say, no preconceived agreement that I was going to send them the video prior to it being posted. I've had other companies ask to do those very things. I always reject those offers. So when a company like Saker is confident enough to send out their tool without any of those conditions, they should be praised. It shows you that they believe in their product, and I want to thank them for that. Until next time, thank you for watching.